


Hero

by AryaGEN



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Adorable FitzSimmons, Declarations Of Love, Fitz and Jemma are together, Fitz bonds with Skye and Mack, Fitz confronts his fear of heights to save Jemma, Infrequent Swearing, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-30
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2018-02-23 05:08:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2535308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AryaGEN/pseuds/AryaGEN
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Fitzsimmons) Fitz jumps out of the plane to rescue Simmons but nearly drowns when they hit the water. Series 2 era AU as Fitz and Simmons work through their budding relationship against the backdrop of a growing HYDRA threat...<br/>(Features flashbacks to Academy era Fitzsimmons as well)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MadameMare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadameMare/gifts).



> Disclaimer: I do not own Marvel's Agents of SHIELD.

The throbbing pain in his head had disappeared the moment she’d been sucked out of the BUS and become nothing more than just a small dot in the distance, before falling from view entirely. He had shouted until his throat was raw and had bruised his fist against the glass that separated him from her, Jemma Simmons; his best friend and the love of his life. The realisation that he loved her hit him hard; he’d always known she was special but it was only as she fell from the cargo ramp that he knew he loved her, completely. He had screamed and pleaded and thrown himself at the door but she was gone, and if he didn’t do anything he’d never see her again. He needed to act, _fast._ Fitz only noticed the tears burning at his eyes as his vision blurred and even then he ignored them, willing himself to fight the sheer panic that had gripped onto him and rooted him to the spot. His heart pounded so fast it threatened to burst his chest and even as he turned to grab the vaccine, _antiserum_ , from its position on one of the lab worktops he felt as though he would be sick.

 

It haunted Fitz that she had been there one moment and then was gone the next, that the pale, terrified and tearful expression she bore as she stared at him and cried, would be his last memory of her. It had been so fast – a couple of seconds and suddenly his world had shifted irreparably for the worse. All at once the life they had and the life he found he had so often pictured them having together in the future crashed down on him, constricting and threatening to paralyse him in horror. And yet that awful, gut wrenching feeling lasted only a brief moment before Fitz’s mind was awash with equations instead of emotions. The shock and adrenaline and the knowledge that each second was more precious now than it had ever been in his life purged the feeling from him, freeing him. Each passing second ripped her further away from him and closer to death. If someone had asked Fitz to recite the periodic table then he couldn’t have answered, his body was simply reacting – it was sheer instinct that drove him.

 

He stilled his trembling hands as they pushed the antiserum into the delivery mechanism he’d manufactured, aware even as he did so that it was almost certainly too late. Once he heard the tell-tale clicking sound that revealed the antiserum was ready to be administered he hurried to the door, the young scientist’s mind was a flurry of questions. _How fast was the plane travelling? What was the wind speed at this altitude? How quickly would she have reached terminal velocity? How many seconds have passed since she fell? How do I save her?_ Fitz wouldn’t let himself just do nothing; he couldn’t stand by that glass if there was even the slightest chance that he could stop her from dying – _I’ll jump off the bloody plane if I have to,_ he thought, the idea not fully dawning on him that that was exactly what he would have to do.

 

To Fitz all this had happened so fast he had barely noticed what he was doing, one instant he had been staring through the glass wistfully into the space Simmons had occupied just seconds earlier, the next he had slotted the antiserum into its distribution mechanism and as he ran onto the cargo ramp himself, the wind whipping into his face, he wasn’t even sure when he had unlocked the doors to the lab. Soon enough he was fumbling with the straps for one of the parachutes, slipping first one arm in and then the other, holding onto the antiserum so tightly that his knuckles practically shone white. He cursed as he realised he had only just submitted new designs for parachutes that would open themselves at a certain altitude and doubted very much he’d know the correct time to open one manually. He noted the two cords on the front; one red, one yellow, as he got ready to jump – pushing to the back of his mind that he was terrified of heights. He was halfway through attaching the clip across his chest when he found himself running to the edge of the plane; his feet heavily slapping against the metal beneath them, and then against nothing.

 

The fall was probably the single most horrific experience that Fitz had ever had in what he at that point suspected would be a painfully short life... with the emphasis on the painfully. His whole body seized up in protest to the sudden drop; his stomach muscles tightened into knots and he flailed uncontrollably as he hurtled towards the ocean in free fall. The young scientist slammed his eyes shut as he began to spin, gritting his teeth so hard he thought they would shatter into his gums and felt his arms and legs kicking and grasping in vain as he desperately attempted to hold on to something even though there was, of course, nothing around him but clouds. The turning sensation made him wretch and then, almost as quickly as it had come, he suddenly felt remarkably peaceful. His body relaxed and he almost enjoyed the feeling of the air running through his hair – the thought occurring to him that what with all the work he’d been doing with SHIELD it had been over a month since he’d had it cut – it was far too unruly and looked unkempt. If his mouth hadn’t been drawn into a grimace he could have burst out laughing – him, Leo Fitz, the nerd from sci-ops, terrified of heights, had just jumped out of a plane – and all he could think of was his hair. He couldn’t wait to tell Jemma. _Jemma._

Even long after the whole ordeal was over he would never understand how, at some point between stepping off the plane and practically losing his parachute, he had managed to forget the reason for his jump. He came to suspect it was just the shock; both of watching the love of his life disappear in front of his eyes but also in the face of the prospect of his own probable death. He never spoke about the jump with anybody and after what followed nobody dared to ask him about it, nobody wanted to stir unpleasant memories. Nothing was the same after he was back in the BUS. He knew they thought about what happened though, he sometimes caught them looking at him in pity, like he was some kind of wounded animal, but every time it looked like they were about to say something they stopped themselves and just looked away. It was better that way. He didn’t want to talk about what happened, not with _them_ anyway.

 

It was only when he felt the parachute slip off from one arm that he forced his eyes open, realising in terror that he hadn’t tied the strap across his chest before jumping and that he had accidently freed one arm of the chute in the process of flailing inanely. If he could breathe, his breath would have caught in his lungs as the parachute slid down his other arm towards his wrist – he wouldn’t be able to pull the cord from this position, and even if he could, he wouldn’t be able to hold on to it with just one hand. He would have screamed out in panic had the fall not squeezed the air from his lungs, his desperate manoeuvres to push his arm back through the strap only made him spin more – making it that much harder to do. He just about managed to pull it from his wrist up to his elbow but almost dropped the antiserum when he tried to thread his arm through the shoulder strap. Try as he might he couldn’t do it and resolved to just hold on tight to the parachute – unable to unclench his fingers he had to pin the one secure shoulder strap to him with his arms, bringing him into an uncomfortably fast dive position. His right hand, the one that wasn’t gripping the antiserum, was clasped firmly around the yellow cord ready to deploy, even though he was aware the sudden loss of speed would likely wrench the chute from him, if not dislocate his shoulder. Still, he held the cord tightly. _Not without Jemma._

 

He scanned below him for any signs of her but the wind stung his eyes and face, making it tough to see anything. He knew he’d already wasted a lot of time spinning and that he needed to reach terminal velocity fast if he hadn’t any chance of reaching her – he also just had to hope that she had fallen in some non-aerodynamic position. It didn’t seem possible to him that his heart could beat any faster but somehow it did, he had long since fallen below cloud cover and looked with terror at the ocean of blue rushing to meet him. The young scientist knew that the chute wouldn’t do him any good not properly fastened and that he wouldn’t have time to fasten it and find Jemma, it wasn’t a choice to him though. A dark thought played across his mind from the argument they’d had earlier. He had shouted at her “You’ve been beside me the whole damn time!”

 

 _Fitzsimmons_. _Whatever happens, happens together._

 

He had almost lost hope of finding her, desperately scouring the air around him and looking for her, willing her to still be alive, when at last he caught sight of her – little more than a spec below him, twisting and turning. He straightened himself as much as he could, not daring to close his eyes for a moment in case he lost sight of her. As he plummeted head first he found he’d guessed right; he was travelling much faster than she was, he just hoped he’d be able to administer the antiserum in midair. At the back of his mind he also knew he’d have to attach the parachute properly or all of it would be for nothing, even if he caught up with her in time.

 

His heart skipped a beat when he could make out her face, red with tears and contorted with her eyes scrunched shut. Even with the likelihood that they would both die when they hit the ocean he found himself breaking into a broad grin as he saw her again. She was still spinning uncontrollably which meant he reached her faster than he’d expected, holding out his hands and pulling himself flat to get closer. Of course he’d seen stunts like this in films but that wasn’t what guided him in, he knew the physics, the angle he needed and the best way to achieve it. His body was a machine, each part corresponding to direction and speed; he pulled himself into a flat position as though he were controlling one of his DWARFs. Getting close enough to save her, though, was another matter – his first approach earned him a firm kick in the jaw. It wasn’t intentional, but her legs were twisting in the air as much as she was.

 

His second approach was more successful, Jemma had opened her eyes to figure out what she’d kicked and stared at him with a mixture of awe, sadness, fear and confusion. She stopped herself from spinning as Fitz glided towards her, overcompensating on speed and missing each other by only a few feet. In turning around Fitz had fallen lower than Jemma, making it tricky to catch her, he relied on her getting to him. He spread his arms and legs to make the least aerodynamic shape possible and give her some time to pick up speed; it was a lot nicer looking upwards, he noted, than downwards. At least this way he wouldn’t see the water when he hit it, the sky barely seemed to move at all. _Maybe it won’t hurt?_ He hoped, taking comfort in seeing Jemma soaring towards him, lit from behind by the sun like his very own angel.

When they collided with each other, they hit hard, immediately building into a spin. Jemma locked her arms tightly around Fitz pulling him into a close embrace and Fitz slammed the delivery mechanism against her leg, a lot rougher than he’d intended to, giving her the antiserum. There was a blue flash and she let out a high pitched squeal confirming to him that it worked. He dropped the delivery mechanism and focussed on the parachute, somehow managing to loop his arm into the other shoulder strap and fastening the chest harness around the two of them. Just as when he had left the lab he was functioning by pure instinct, the timid, awkward Fitz was gone, replaced by that same Fitz that had walked into the lab with the Chitauri helmet regardless of his own personal risk. He locked his arms under hers and brought them around to support the back of her neck – when he pulled the cord, it would yank him up and snap her head backwards if he wasn’t careful. He hadn’t come this far to lose her again. He pushed his head against her shoulder, and hers rested on his, before pulling the cord.

 

He almost dropped her. _Almost._ When the chute deployed it felt like they were being pulled upwards though in reality Fitz knew they were slowing down, not changing direction. The force of it made Jemma weigh heavier in his arms, the harness around them gave her some support but had it not been for her arms around his back and his arms around her the harness would’ve broken and he wouldn’t have been able to catch up with her again. The thought didn’t cross his mind though, he had his Jemma back. In his arms, he had saved her. As they held eachother in a relieved embrace, drifting lazily towards the water below them, he heard Jemma whisper tiredly into his ear.

 

“You’re afraid of heights,” she said, arms locked tightly around him, he felt her tears against his cheek, “you said you’d never even bungee jump, not for the whole world.”

 

“Well… you’re more than that to me Jem,” he mumbled into her ear, before adding with his more usual awkwardness, “I’d bungee jump for you.”

 

He didn’t think it was possible but she deepened the embrace, holding onto him so tightly he thought he might well die of asphyxiation before they hit the water. She had burst into laughter, she said something but the only word he really caught was his name. He was about to ask her what she said when a bright blue light emitted from her like a pulse and she fell heavy in his arms, unconscious. He cursed himself for not thinking about it – the antiserum had knocked the rat out, of course it would do the same for her. His grip on her was loosening under her weight and his weakness and he found himself praying that they’d hit the water sooner, he couldn’t drop her in unconscious as he’d planned to, she’d drown before he could untangle himself from the backpack.

 

His arms shook with exertion, Fitz was a scientist, not an athlete – he probably would have dropped her immediately had it not been for all the adrenaline pumping through him, giving him strength. He found himself looking up at the sky for help, hoping to see the BUS speeding towards them, offering an easy solution, but he had no such luck. When he’d designed the new chutes he’d seen a mask to provide oxygen in case of a water landing – if the main chute and assorted ropes came down on top of the parachutist then they were almost certain to drown in the water before they could reach the surface. He tried to push the uncomforting facts back into the corners of his mind, _in an average breath the human lungs can take in around 2 litres of water, 3 litres of fresh water is fatal, 1.5 litres of sea water is fatal, two thirds of swimmers that die are good swimmers, the cold gag response is the most common cause of swimming death, drowning is supposed to feel quite pleasant after the water fills the lungs._

He looked down at Jemma and then at the approaching water; they couldn’t be much more than a hundred or so feet above it now. He could make out the gradual rise and fall of the ocean surface as the waves swelled and crested underneath the surface. Fitz knew he’d only get one chance at this – if he reached for the oxygen mask too high he could drop Simmons and she’d either die from the fall or from drowning, if he reached for it too low he might not get it in time and they would both drown. He knew where it was even without having had to look – he’d seen it on the specs, they attached it underneath the main pack so you could reach for it while still wearing the chute. Fitz made a note that if he ever got out of his situation he’d redesign the parachutes again, this time attaching the oxygen mask to one of the front straps. When they were little more than twenty feet above the dark waves he let go with one arm, her full weight fell against the harness and his other hand. By the time he reached the mask, attached loosely to the bottom of the pack as he thought it would be, he could already hear the harness begin to tear. He made a note to strengthen that to as she lurched away from him slightly, straining the muscles on his left arm and fraying the thin strip of fabric that held them together. It made no matter; he pulled the mask free and pushed it over her lips, dragging the strap over her head and against her soft brown hair just moments before his feet touched the water and its icy embrace.

 

Having fell however far it was they’d fallen Fitz was already cold before he reached the water; he hadn’t had time to grab a jacket and had jumped off the plane in thin, ordinary clothing. The wind had cut right the way through him and, despite having held Simmons close to him, she was not much warmer. Even so, as the water closed around his ankles and drew him in Fitz had never felt so freezing before. He wasn’t worried about exposure, they had some twenty eight minutes before they’d need to worry about that, but by the time it rose above his waist he began to panic, realising the water would induce a cold gag reflex, threatening to flood his lungs with water, if he couldn’t keep his head above the surface. He had never been a bad swimmer but that was in public pools, heated, safe, public pools that you can stand up in. As he felt the water close around his chest and over his arms, still wrapped around Jemma, he began fumbling with the strap that tied him to the chute, unclasping it with great difficulty given his shaking fingers. He slipped the shoulder straps off him and took as deep a breath as he could as the water reached his neck; pressing in on his lungs and making them burn inside him. He kicked in the water furiously and held Simmons upright – even if she had oxygen, he didn’t want to let go of her ever again.

 

It wasn’t until the chute came down on them that he once again realised the danger, the great sail of fabric and its attendant ropes would trap them under the water if they didn’t move fast. His arms burned against the cold water as he held one of them around Jemma’s waist and used the other to try and steer them away but he knew even after he began that they wouldn’t be fast enough to avoid the oncoming danger. He tried to take another deep breath but failed, the icy water constricting his ribs and only allowing for short, sharp gasps. By the time the great stretch of fabric dropped on them Fitz was terrified; he’d come all this way only to die in the water, he frantically began swimming away, kicking his feet and splashing his one useable arm but the sheet came down and before he knew it he’d been pushed underwater. He tried to swim forwards but his feet got caught in ropes and having left the pack with the chute in behind, he couldn’t cut them with the knife it should have had. The water became darker around him and he felt a sense of rising dread surge through him as he realised there was no way out. The harder he kicked, the tighter the ropes around his ankles became and the faster he’d run out of air. He could probably have made the distance if he wasn’t also dragging Jemma, but he wouldn’t let go of her.

 

Finally, his lips parted, and the water pushed into his mouth, forced its way down his throat and then rested in his lungs. It made him want to be sick and cough and cry and scream all at once and then, nothing. His final thoughts as that dark, but oddly warm, nothingness surrounded him were of Jemma; hoping beyond hope that he could keep her from sinking but feeling his grip on her gradually loosening.

 

 

 

 

He woke up and coughed up several lungfuls of water all over the cargo ramp of the BUS, spluttering and shivering and shaking as Skye removed an oxygen mask from his face. He instinctively rolled onto his side, throat so raw he was certain he’d cough up blood not seawater. As he lay there, face pressed against the cold metal of the ramp floor, he saw Simmons sat against the wall with several blankets around her shoulders, her face pale and expression unreadable. Coulson was with her, muttering something to her, but once Fitz awoke he immediately rushed over to him. Coulson’s face bore a mixture of surprise, elation and concern.

 

“Jemma!” Fitz called out, his voice cracked and rough, choking on what leftover seawater was in his system. He had to be sure his eyes weren’t playing tricks on him.

 

“Simmons is fine,” Coulson soothed him, “you saved her life.” Fitz closed his eyes in relief breaking into a wide grin and rolling onto his back to look at the ceiling. Agent Coulson continued, “But what you did was reckless and irresponsible, you could have got yourself killed and this could have gone very wro–”

 

Fitz cut him off, “Don’t–” He stopped, he didn’t understand. “Don’t–” It happened again. He tried to tell Coulson never to tell him there was no way, and in so doing repeat something Coulson had told him once. “Don’t… ever–” He forced out before a slight smile broke out on Coulson’s face and he nodded in understanding.

 

Something was wrong, Fitz could feel it. Something had changed in him, his mind wasn’t working right. He looked pleadingly at Simmons who had tears streaked down her cheeks, before looking to Skye who was packing away the emergency crash paddles from the medical station in the lab. “I…” Fitz stuttered, looking at the crash cart, “I was…” he turned back to Coulson and asked, hesitantly, “How, erm, how long was I… gone?”

 

“Almost four minutes.”

 

His heart sank in horror, he knew. He _knew_ what it meant, what could happen, and so did Jemma. She shakily walked towards him, the effects of the antiserum not having worn off properly, and crouched at his side, placing her hand on his forehead and running her fingers through his unkempt hair. Fitz remembered he was supposed to tell her something about his hair halfway through the jump but couldn’t piece it together. When he furrowed his brow in frustration Jemma pressed her head against his for comfort. From the corner of the room he was acutely aware of Skye talking to Coulson.

 

“I still can’t believe he saved her,” Skye said, “he’s afraid of heights.”

 

Coulson ignored her and touched his earpiece, “May, how long until we touch down?”

 

_Fitz never spoke about the jump with anybody and after what followed nobody dared to ask him about it, nobody wanted to stir unpleasant memories. Nothing was the same after he was back in the BUS. He knew they thought about what happened though, he sometimes caught them looking at him in pity, like he was some kind of wounded animal, but every time it looked like they were about to say something they stopped themselves and just looked away. It was better that way._

_He didn’t want to talk about what happened, not with them anyway._

 

He only wanted to talk to her. That night, as he was whisked away to a SHIELD medical facility for proper treatment she called him her hero, she said that him falling out of the sky and rescuing her was the happiest moment of her life, she placed chaste kisses across his cheeks and held his hand all the way through the MRI scans. Eventually, after he pressed her on the subject, she told him that May had brought the BUS down to hover at the water level while Skye and Coulson dragged them inside. She regained consciousness in the water and had held Fitz’s head above the surface. They had had to resuscitate him twice on the cargo ramp floor; the first time he woke he drown again almost immediately after waking and seeing that, watching him writhe and choke on the floor, was the worst moment of her life, twinned with finding him unconscious faced down in the water.

Once, after a couple of weeks of intensive care at the Hub, he’d wheeled himself past one of the training rooms and heard a Level 7 Field Agent teaching Level 3s the basics of parachuting, he even heard his own name mentioned, well, not his name – but him.

“How hard can it be, really?” A student asked, “I heard an engineer did it.” There were some sniggers around the class.

 

The Level 7 said, “Aye, an engineer with almost no field experience and a fear of heights jumped without attaching a parachute, administered a serum to someone in midair and then give his oxygen to save that person. That engineer had never so much as fired a real gun at another person yet when it came to it was more gutsy than half the agents on this base.”

 

After a long period of silence another student asked, “What made him do it?”

 

The Level 7 paused in thought, “I imagine the same reason any of us do anything, because he thought he could, and because he couldn’t live with himself if he didn't.” The Level 7 turned to look out of one of the glass doors, noticing Fitz in surprise and dipped his head in respect. As Fitz wheeled away he heard the man continue, “That same engineer knew that there are more important things than ranks and rewards, he was offered a Level 6 position but refused it, citing he wouldn’t want to be a higher position than the colleague he saved.”

As Fitz wheeled away he felt that a couple of the students were watching him, he was sure he heard one of them saying “That's him, isn’t it?” He couldn’t stop himself grinning in spite of everything.

 

When the doctors told him that they had no idea how permanent the damage to his brain would be, that the results for the first few weeks were inconclusive and it could heal, stay the same or get worse and they had no indications of which eventuality would happen, Fitz squeezed Simmons hand so hard it was almost uncomfortable. He looked to her despairingly in the knowledge that he might never again be the same. She had barely left his side since he’d been admitted to the Hub, Coulson had left her to it, though he still had work to do so didn’t visit as often.

 

“I’m… I’m…” he struggled, cursing himself as he lost the words.

 

“Going to get better?” Simmons replied a little to optimistically, the pain showing through.

 

“Useless.” Fitz spat out, as though the very word were poisonous to him.

 

“No.” Jemma cut across him firmly, looking right at him before repeating slightly less sternly, “No, Fitz.”

 

“But I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…” he grimaced in frustration, “I can’t… express…” he looked away from her, “I’m damaged… useless…”

 

She placed her hand against his jaw and pulled him into her so that their eyes locked on each other. “No, Fitz, you are not. You are more than that, you are so much more. You’re going to get better; we’ll figure this out, together. You fixed me, now let me fix you. And after that dive – once you’re out of hospital – you could even become a field agent. Have you heard about the way people are talking about you, you’re a hero, Fitz.” She grinned, knowing that it had always been a secret dream of his to get out of the lab and lead a mission. “You are _my_ hero Fitz, you saved my life, you gave up everything for me, I lo–” She stopped herself, blushing, before leaning in towards him so their faces were only inches apart, “I love you Leo Fitz.”

 

He broke into a wide smile, joy radiating from him, and pressed a kiss against her lips before whispering back, “I love you Jemma Simmons… You’re right… We… We’ll… We’ll figure it out…”

 

They said “together” at the same time.


	2. Promise Me

Fitz woke with a start, gasping for breath, his chest was heavy. His fingers desperately scrambled at the low ceiling of his bunk and he felt, for the briefest of moments, as though he were underwater; the darkness of the still of night reminding him how he struggled to pull himself free from the ropes of the parachute. No matter what sleeping agents he took, he couldn’t shake the nightmares; in fact he was sure they were getting worse. It wasn’t until he noticed a soft warm breath breezing against his ear and the back of his neck that he remembered where he was and who was with him. He let out a sigh of relief and let his head sink deeply into his pillow, _their_ pillow.

 

“Shhh… it’s just a dream…” an obviously tired Jemma whispered reassuringly, running her hand through his messy brown hair and nuzzling her head on his shoulder. By now she was used to him periodically bolting upright in the night, it had frightened her at first but nowadays she simply held him all the closer to her. Since they had confessed their love for each other they had taken to sleeping together every night – not in the way that Fitz had wanted – they hadn’t had sex, but he took comfort in her company just as much. The first nights after the fall he had woken up not remembering if she was alive or dead; of all the side effects of his hypoxia that had been the worst. He had found he couldn’t always distinguish between dreams and daytime and, without Jemma there, more than once he had woken everybody on the BUS up shouting out her name in blind panic. It was for that reason they were allowed to stay in the same bunk; Coulson had originally objected to it, there was a protocol for just about everything, but it became clear Jemma needed to be around him at least until they figured out some way of restoring his memories properly. Besides, after the revelation that HYDRA had been inside SHIELD all along, those protocols didn’t really mean much anymore.

 

And it wasn’t for lack of trying either that Fitz couldn’t fix his own state; in truth he had done quite a lot to improve it. Within a week of being released from hospital he had created a rudimentary serum that corrected the shaking in his bad hand quite considerably – it didn’t fix the problem, just reduced it and restored a little more of his fine motor skills. He kept it secret from Simmons and the team, suspecting if they found out what else it did they’d make him stop taking it. Other than the serum, since they moved to the playground he had tried dozens of different inventions and techniques to bridge the damaged connections in his mind, most with little success. The only three that seemed to have any impact though were playing XBOX with Mack, sleeping on the BUS rather than in the Playground’s bedquarters and being around Jemma, especially at night. Yet despite all this, and everything else he had been trying, no matter what he did Fitz couldn’t stop the nightmares: the fall, not being able to catch her, the water entering his lungs… It made him want to be sick.

 

It had been all he had ever wanted to wake up with Jemma curled up against him, able to _feel_ her heart beating, to press his lips against her forehead in soft kisses. The fingers on his better hand, the one he could still control fully, interlocked with hers and she let out a contented sigh as they lay next to one another. He loved her, and she loved him, and they were whole together. But it wasn’t enough, _he_ wasn’t enough for her – not the way he was. _Damaged. Broken._ The words bore down on him hard and tears burnt hot against his eyes, rolling down his cheeks. If Fitz was broken then so was Fitzsimmons – he’d known almost from the start, the only time they connected was when they lie together in the night, in the day they were off kilter, he couldn’t finish her sentences anymore – he couldn’t finish his own sentences anymore. The time they spent together on the BUS at night, not in the new lab in the day, was the only time he could relax and be himself, it was the only time he didn’t feel quite so useless and it was because of her.

 

Which made the thought that he had almost lost her all the worse.

When she fell he barely had time to consider what was at stake, more of it had been reflex than forethought, but nowadays her falling was all he could think about. Whatever time he spent around her was tinged with the sadness that they almost never experienced that moment together. Sometimes it was just a fleeting feeling, passing almost immediately, but other times, like tonight, the sense of almost loss gripped him tight and squeezed the air from his lungs; in many ways it felt like the water did when he almost drowned – surrounding him in a claustrophobic embrace. _Almost. Almost._ He hated that word more than he had thought possible, he _almost_ lost her, he _almost_ died… he’s _almost_ there. He slipped his hand away from hers and pulled himself out of bed, muttering to her to go back to sleep and that he would be back shortly. She grumbled an acknowledgement, too sleepy probably to have heard what he’d said, and Fitz traced his way familiarly towards the lab, realising only as he walked down the cargo hatch of the BUS into the cold hanger that he was only wearing pyjamas.

 

He didn’t give Coulson enough credit for the new lab; it was bigger, better equipped and mercifully warmer than the old one on the plane – it just no longer felt like _his_ lab anymore. He threw on one of white coats, for warmth rather than protection, and went towards a series of locked vaults at one end of the room, where he kept his more secretive inventions; the ones he worked on when he couldn’t sleep. Tonight, or indeed that morning – Fitz wasn’t sure what time it was – he would continue working on a brace for his bad arm designed to minimise the shaking even further and, hopefully, to enable him to stop taking his serum which, although nobody knew it, had been presenting some awful side effects including headaches, restlessness and, most worryingly, periodic blackouts. So far he was lucky the only person who had ever found him after one of his blackouts was Skye who, after convincing her it was a side effect of hypoxia, agreed not to tell Simmons. If Simmons had known she would have instantly seen through the lie and made him stop taking his serum altogether; and he needed it – at least for now.

 

He held his shaking hand out in front of him and, after unlocking one of the vaults to get a vile of the serum, rolled up the labcoat sleeve before giving himself a shot. Warmth spread from his arm through him and for a glorious moment he felt at peace, he probably shouldn’t have included a slight sedative in the formula, he noted, rolling down his sleeve and feeling thankful that he tended to wear long jumpers during in the day that covered his by now blotchy arm from all the injections. He threw the delivery mechanism for the shot back into the vault and locked it before hearing the lab door slam loudly behind him, shaking him from that feeling of euphoria the serum gave him and prompting him to wheel around in panic. _Don’t be Jemma,_ he thought, immediately realising that whoever was at the door had probably seen him take the serum. He cursed himself for not checking everyone was in bed, but then, how was he to know he wasn’t the only one up?

 

“Are we going to talk about that,” the deep, but soft, voice of Mack rolled out across the lab. Mack gestured towards the locker with his eyes and then closed the distance between them in several large steps. Were it anyone else and he would have been intimidating with his height, ridiculously overtoned physique and inability to wear anything other than vest tops, but somehow, despite all that, he came across as gentle and caring. Fitz had always admired that in him.

 

Realising Fitz hadn’t yet given him an answer he stuttered, “er… no…”

 

Mack waited a few moments, looked him up and down, before breaking into a slight smile and saying warmly, “Alright, that’s cool man. What are we building tonight?”

 

When Fitz had first met him he had originally thought him brutish, unrefined and just one of Coulson’s new hired muscle _._ In fact, before Fitz worked up the courage to talk to Mack, “Muscle _”_ had been the nickname Fitz used for him whenever he mentioned Mack to others in the group. Skye and Tripp both laughed when he said it, Coulson frowned and May didn’t react at all – but then than wasn’t exactly uncommon. Simmons simply rolled her eyes and told him that Mack was _really_ nice, and then adding that he wasn’t as nice as Fitz in response to the obviously wounded expression she’d drawn from him. Even Fitz had to admit, he was _really_ nice. Looking back, Fitz couldn’t have been more wrong about the impressive man standing in front of him – indeed, Mack’s love of all things mechanical mirrored Fitz’s, albeit in a less sophisticated manner and he wasn’t a bad gamer either.

 

Honestly Fitz wasn’t sure if Mack was as good a gamer as he used to be before the hypoxia, Mack always struck a good balance; playing competitively enough for it to be fun, but never letting Fitz win outright like Skye did. When they first started it was clear that he wasn’t throwing his all into it so that it was a challenge for them both but with the serum though Fitz had noticed him breaking into a sweat during one of their last games. When he commented on it, Mack blamed the temperature of the lab jokingly, before admitting Fitz was getting better with a joke – _I might actually lose for real now_. If someone else had said that it might’ve offended Fitz but somehow, coming from Mack, it gave him a swell of pride. Simmons also seemed relieved that Fitz had found a friend in Mack, given that everybody kept treating Fitz like he was damaged it was nice to find somebody who didn’t seem to notice let alone mind the odd way he acted and his difficulty stringing sentences together.

 

“The brace,” Fitz answered, to which Mack nodded and walked over to the sink to wash his hands before they began. Originally it had seemed weird to work with another mechanic, especially one whose hands were always covered in motor oil, but Mack joined Fitz on around half of his late night building sessions – frequently enough to suggest that he too had trouble sleeping. They never spoke about that though.

 

“We should be nearly there with it shouldn’t we?” Mack asked enthusiastically as he wiped his hands against one of the towels, leaving dark oil stains on it.

 

“Yeah, we just need to, to…” he trailed off as he unlocked the locker with the brace designs in it and lifted a box of metal parts and pieces onto the lab table, immediately fishing out the pretty much finished contraption. He struggled with finding the next word in his sentence.

 

“Tighten the hinges?” Mack suggested, lifting the toolbox he had taken to leaving in the lab onto the table. When Fitz shook his head he continued, “Shave down the edges on the wrist loops?”

 

“No, well we need to do that too but…” He paused, closing his eyes as he tried to visualise the word. “Trackers!” He half-shouted, “We need to calibrate it to the trackers.”

 

The technology Fitz was referred to was based off Tony Stark’s Mark 42 suit; a series of markers are inserted under the skin across his body which allow the suit to respond to his actions. Of course in Fitz’s case he was only interested in installing them on his arm to help with the precise movements he had to make when building things. Fitz had begun work on the design for his prototype back at the Hub; using SHIELD computers to access case files from Stark Industries on the Iron Man suits. Sifting through the information had been frustrating at first as everything was Level 10 Classified and even after he’d got into the files, the only word he’d been able to find was “JARVIS” – everything else had been heavily redacted or worse yet deleted. When he asked Coulson about it, all the man had said was that Stark had hacked the SHIELD servers and removed a lot of his research from them, he claimed that Stark was a “private” person – something Fitz highly doubted. He had wanted to say, _what kind of private person reveals to the world they’re a superhero on live television?_ But thinking back, Fitz realised he never did get round to asking it; not that it really mattered. The only thing that did matter was getting his hands on the software that would enable him to use his arm fully again.

 

Surely enough, bit by bit, or rather byte by byte, Fitz had uncovered a few lines of code and, with Skye’s help, was able to begin reverse engineering it for his own project. Strictly speaking it was highly unethical, every part of his scientific mind – or rather, ever part of the parts of his scientific mind that still worked – protested at plagiarising from Stark. Admittedly though, he felt much better about it when he remembered that the man had made his money and name in the weapon’s industry, and Fitz believed the use of his arm would let him save lives. Working on things had got much trickier after HYDRA resurfaced and they had to regroup from the series of attacks; he had had to shelf his designs until they were more firmly established at the Playground, eventually completing the software with Skye on the bus when he couldn’t sleep. When it came to incorporating the AI interface into his design he only made one major change – he changed the name from “JARVIS” to “JEMMA.” It seemed fitting since the real Jemma was also helping him to recover. In truth though it didn’t make that much difference as he removed the speech function from the AI; the thought made him smile a bit – despite everything, the great Tony Stark had obviously been lonely enough in his lab to need to create someone to talk to. Fitz had Simmons and now Mack; he didn’t need AI to keep him company.

 

“You sure you want to put them all in tonight man?” Mack asked him sceptically as Fitz pulled out an injector not dissimilar from the one that he administered his serum with and loaded it with the trackers. All in all there were some thirty to apply – five for each finger and the hand itself broken down with one per phalange and then two for each metacarpal bone, two for the thumb and the rest ran down his forearm. The thought of that many separate injections did make Fitz’s stomach turn, but it was better than continually taking the serum.

 

“Yeah,” Fitz mumbled almost so quietly that Mack didn’t hear him as he finished placing the last tracker into the injector. He took off the lab coat, only then remembering that he was still in his pyjamas, before rolling up his sleeve – exposing the bruised skin underneath. It made Fitz uncomfortable as he knew Mack would ask him questions and he couldn’t do this without Mack’s help – there was no way Simmons would agree to it. Sure enough, when Mack saw the discolouring running up his arm he confronted Fitz, the warmth of his voice laced with concern.

 

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” It wasn’t a question and Fitz knew that, he couldn’t say no.

 

“The shaking,” Fitz mumbled, “I’ve found, I can…” he trailed off, unsure of what to say but this time Mack didn’t offer him words, just stared at him until he answered, “I’ve been able to stop the shaking, with a serum… but, it’s not… it’s not enough.”

 

“This serum,” Mack began, “anyone else know about it? Does Simmons?”

 

When Fitz shook his head Mack’s expression shifted from amiable to visibly concerned, the mechanic’s eyes traced up and down the trauma lines of Fitz’s arm; the red blotches where he injected himself and the pale blue and mulberry hues of the surrounding skin. When Fitz pulled out an acetate design indicating where each tracker needed to be placed and carefully laid it over his skin, so that it was clear where he would need to inject, Mack stepped backwards slightly, drawing away.

 

“I can’t do this without you,” Fitz told him truthfully, he knew how painful the trackers would be and there was no way he could install thirty of them successively – he would need Mack to do it. The main part of the brace was finished; with this done he would have the use of his arm by morning and not have to take the wretched serum again.

 

“Are you sure?” Mack asked him, staring intently into Fitz’s eyes as he did so. The thought occurred to Fitz that Mack probably knew how painful this was going to be and was offering him a way out. When Fitz nodded Mack began tying leather loops around the table to pin Fitz’s arm – for this to work he had to keep it completely still, which Fitz doubted he’d be able to do once they got started. In what seemed like no time at all, they were ready to begin; Mack looked at him once more “you don’t have to be awake for this. I can get some anaesthetic…”

 

“No,” Fitz told him determinedly, stringing together a full sentence almost without gaps, “I need to be able to move it afterwards… the erm, anaesthetic, will just… get in the way.”

 

Mack nodded and pressed the cold nozzle of the injector against where it needed to be on Fitz’s arm. The young scientist took a deep breath before Mack squeezed the trigger. There was a sickening hiss sound from the delivery mechanism and a trickle of blood bubbled up from where the tracker was now lying buried. Fitz winced in pain, letting out a sharp breath and a curse. It didn’t take long for the second, then the third, and then more, trackers to be injected and as Mack worked his way further and further up Fitz’s arm until he reached the hand tears began to well up in Fitz’s eyes. It wasn’t just pain, he was introducing new components to his body; his arm ran hot underneath the surface of his skin and each new marker seemed to itch and burn more uncomfortably than the last. By the time it came to attaching them to his fingers Mack had to force Fitz’s hand open with each shot as it instinctively screwed into a fist.

 

“Four more,” Mack said after what seemed like an eternity, tears were flowing freely down Fitz’s cheeks, rolling under his jaw and dripping onto the table. It made Mack sick to see the young scientist in so much pain. “We can stop.”

 

“No.” Fitz growled with an aggressive determination that unnerved the mechanic, Fitz’s face was pale, his hair matted and his brow coated in sweat. His entire frame was shaking and he breathed heavily, looking away from his now bloodied arm. “We’re _almost_ there.”

 

Mack nodded and, after a brief joke about it maybe being better if Fitz had just replaced his arm entirely, sped through the last shots; thankful that the affected area of Fitz was restrained on the table rather than free to lash about. When the last tracker was in he threw the injector against the lab table in disgust and placed his hand on Fitz’s shoulder, “let’s hope this works.”

 

The idea that it mightn’t work hadn’t occurred to Fitz, who immediately laughed in a worryingly delirious fashion at the thought that he could have gone through all that pain for nothing. Even as Mack undid the straps binding his arm to the table Fitz continued to let out small giggles while wiping the blood from his arm with tissues.

 

“You ready?” Mack asked, his anxiety evident in his voice, as Fitz slipped his arm into the brace he’d designed and Mack had helped him build. They hadn’t yet worked out how to condense the power source so for now they simply ran the brace off two bulky batteries; Fitz made a note to consider looking at Stark’s arc reactor technology. The design itself was fairly simple: a series of surprisingly thin metal rods ran from his upper arm to his wrist and then branched out to cover his hand like a gauntlet. These rods could become magnetic when a current ran through them and were designed to counter the shaking by sending a series of fast electrical charges through alternating rods according to the movements registered by the trackers. With the trackers doubling as receptors to the magnetism “JEMMA” could determine the appropriate magnetic pulse to stabilise or guide his motions according to his activity. That was the theory anyway, and since Fitz hadn’t come up with any other ideas but was desperate to come off the serum; he found himself praying it would work – even though he’d never been particularly religious.

 

Atop of the metalwork rested a generic plated leather sleeve that ended in black fingerless gloves – not that dissimilar from the tactical gear he’d seen May or Skye wear from time to time. The only difference was that about halfway up the underside of his forearm a hole had been cut through to make way for a thin touchscreen that allowed him to keep tabs on how the brace was functioning and to make any adjustments to the software he needed. By not addressing the power source concern the bulk of the design was relatively lightweight and barely visible under the sleeve – they had done such a good job with it that if you didn’t already know why he was wearing just one arm’s worth of combat leather, you could probably be forgiven for thinking it was just an obscure fashion sense. Even Fitz had to admit that it looked quite cool when he put a fingerless glove over his good hand to match, even if he didn’t have the full sleeve for that arm – or at least, it would look quite cool if he wasn’t standing in his striped pyjamas. Mack too, look impressed with the result.

 

In the short term Fitz clipped the two rather bulky batteries to his waist, leaving the cables above his pyjama shirt to hang freely and giving him unrestricted movement around the lab. He noticed his good hand shaking as he turned the power on the small screen cut out in the arm and booted up the interface. “Here we go,” he muttered and activated the machine, immediately gritting his teeth as electricity surged through his arm. He cursed loudly and dropped to his knees as a series of vibrations shot through his hand and the trackers powered up with the rest of the brace. It wasn’t painful, just extremely uncomfortable, and after a few rather excruciating moments the pressure that had started to build in the arm abated and he flexed his fingers into a fist shape, pleased with the new level of control. _It had worked._

 

“Is it working?” Mack asked cautiously, ready to comfort Fitz in case it wasn’t.

 

“One way to find out,” Fitz grinned at him slightly mischievously.

 

“XBOX?” Mack asked, not sure how to respond.

 

“No… not XBOX…” Fitz smiled, jumping to his feet and rushing to the door, opening it with his now restored hand and continuing to flex his fingers, eager to find out exactly how precise his control was – whether or not it was similar to before the hypoxia.

 

The cold night air of the hanger stung Fitz’s cheeks, reminding him they were still wet from tears, as he ran out towards the weapons bay. Mack followed, taking long strides not to fall behind. Fitz hated guns, he always had, but they were a useful determiner of precision, the distance between a grouping of bullets would show him more effectively if his hand was sturdy than his own estimation ever could. When he arrived he almost ran straight into Koenig, stopping just in time to avoid knocking him over.

 

“Can’t sleep?” Koenig asked, his expression half amused and half unreadable; certainly not what you’d expect from a man who was almost knocked over by a scientist in pyjamas. Fitz got the distinct feeling the tone was accusatory though, as though he had to explain what he was doing outside the weapons area at this time of night – he found himself thrilled when Mack came to his rescue.

 

“He’s with me,” Mack said calmly as he rounded the corner of the corridor.

 

Koenig simply nodded his head and walked away, somehow that man seemed to merge into the very structure of the Playground as though he were a part of its mortar. Mack unlocked the target range and, once inside, noted that Fitz seemed to have a new lease on life with the physical symptoms of the hypoxia seemingly supressed. The engineer watched as Fitz rushed over to a computer by one of the target ranges and brought up his previous grouping results from the year before – despite his then steady hands he’d only just made it through weapons training. This image was then projected onto the target to allow for the shooters to measure improvement over time, his best grouping had a 14cm diameter between the furthest shots, the less said about his worst grouping the better. Strictly speaking this wouldn’t be a fair comparison: where before he had used both hands this time he intended only to use his weaker one, he was determined to see exactly how shaky it still was without interference.

 

The range was clear, the target set and Mack had brought him a loaded firearm and placed it on the table. As the young scientists hand hovered over the cold steel of the gun he took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a moment and then wrapped his fingers around it. He heard a beep from his arm brace registering he was now holding a weapon (by the position of his fingers) and squeezed the trigger of the gun hard five times, trying not to wince with each loud crack like he had been told off for doing in training all that time ago. The result was incredible, or it would have been – if he had hit the target. The bullets had shot straight past the image of a man and nested into the concrete of the far wall some twice the distance away from what he was aiming at and yet the grouping between all five bullets was less than 6cm in diameter even at that greater distance.

 

“Well I’ll be damned,” Mack said incredulously as they walked down the training range to the holes in the wall, “maybe I should make on for me.”

 

Fitz couldn’t wipe the grin off his face, the brace was a success. It wouldn’t help him with finding words or remembering things any faster but with a little training in shooting one handed, it might well make him one of SHIELDs best field agents. Immediately ideas filled his mind of how he might incorporate the targeting system from Stark’s Iron Man suit into it, with that he could be as good a shot as May. He laughed, tracing his fingers around the holes in the concrete, enjoying the image of him icing whole cohorts of HYDRA soldiers. Jemma had been right, he always wanted to be a Field Agent, and nowadays SHIELD could use as many hands as it could get – even if they had to be guided mechanically. Though even then, in the midst of his joy, he knew he would never leave Jemma’s side.

 

He hit the floor, hard.

 

Fitz had always hated the medical bay – it had an annoying flickering light that made a faint but ever present buzzing sound. It was to this sound that he awoke, covered in sweat and suffering with a nasty tension headache. He immediately flexed his arms and was reassured to feel the cold steel against his weaker one; they’d left his brace on him at least. The blue hues of the room seemed to swim together as he blearily tried to focus on his surroundings. In front of him one of the nurses he didn’t recognise was checking his fluids and he was almost sure he could make out Skye sitting in the back of the room and several blurred figures watching him from behind the windows.

 

“Simmons.” Fitz mumbled, drawing the attention of both the nurse and Skye. Skye rushed over to him, turning to the nurse to ask a question.

 

“Is he alright?” She asked. The nurse took his temperature, shone a torch in his eyes, checked her notes and the computer readings before answering.

 

“It seems likely the worst has passed, of course we won’t know anything for sure until Simmons has finished with the bloodwork.”

 

“Good,” Skye said, looking visibly relieved, before she rounded on Fitz and struck him hard in the chest with her fist.

 

“What the bloody hell was that for?” Fitz responded, so shocked by Skye’s violent outburst he didn’t notice that he didn’t hesitate between any words in the sentence.

 

“Mack showed us what you’ve been injecting yourself with Fitz, what were you thinking?” He rolled his eyes at her and looked away but she continued, “This is serious.”

 

“I was thinking I’m no use to this team without both my hands,” Fitz shot back, once again not noticing he’d strung a second sentence together almost flawlessly.

 

“You scared us half to death; Simmons hasn’t stopped working on countering your serum since you collapsed.” Skye told him, obviously still frustrated, “and Mack wouldn’t leave your side until Coulson ordered him to.”

 

“Simmons knows?” Fitz half asked, hoping he’d misheard Skye – Simmons would give him hell for this he knew it. “Wait what do you mean, how long, er… how long have I been?” As quickly as it had gone his inability to find words returned.

 

“Unconscious?” Skye finished, “two days.” When Fitz said nothing she added, “That serum of yours, what is it?”

 

“A derivative of the GH.325 formula, mixed in with some mild sedatives and a few other nasties,” Fitz admitted, if Simmons had been working on it for two days they’d find out sooner or later. His honesty still earned him a second punch though.

 

“We still don’t know what that does to people,” Skye spoke, the concern evident in her voice.

 

“Well you’re fine, Coulson’s fine…” Fitz protested, he knew she was right but for some reason he felt the urge to argue.

 

“And Garrett turned into a psychopath,” she countered surprisingly aggressively, before lowering her tone, “you should have told me Fitz, that day on the plane.”

 

“You would’ve told Simmons,” Fitz said.

 

“I wouldn’t have–”

 

“You would have, and you would have been right to,”

 

They were interrupted by the closing of the medical bay door, announcing the arrival of Coulson and May. Coulson immediately turned to Skye and gave an order, “Fetch Simmons, she’ll want to see him – Mack too.” Skye left straightaway and in her absence an uncomfortable silence fell on the room.

 

“Sir–” Fitz began but was immediately cut off.

 

“What you did was reckless and irresponsible; you understand you could’ve died.” Coulson told the young scientist, the slight sparkle in his eye the only indication that Coulson was happy to see Fitz wake up. “You should have informed us about your serum Fitz, we could have monitored you, ensured you were safe. You should have at least told Simmons.”

 

Fitz was silent but gave no indication of regret for his actions, he didn’t want to scare Simmons and he didn’t want to alarm the group. It was _his_ choice to do it.

 

“That being said, the results of your last grouping with that brace were beyond impressive, with some training in one handed shooting you can be practically as good a shot as May. That brace, it’s good work Fitz.”

 

“Thank you sir,” he answered, relieved that Coulson had mentioned something he wasn’t angry at Fitz about.

 

“But if you ever do something as stupid as testing an unapproved serum on yourself again,” Coulson trailed off, his voice was dripping in threat but he seemed unwilling to let himself get too angry at Fitz given the young scientist’s state. After a few moments he settled with “We’ll have to have a discussion about your future with SHIELD.”

 

A second awkward silence descended, mercifully broken by a flustered Simmons bursting through the door and practically throwing herself on top of Fitz. She held him in a tight embrace, showering him in soft kisses, before pulling herself away and thumping him in much the same way that Skye had done. “GH.325 Fitz, what went through your head?” She snapped angrily, Coulson seemed to stand straighter at the sound of the formula’s mention.

 

“I didn’t want to be…” he paused, the word he was searching for sat in his throat like acid, “broken.”

 

“Fitz don’t be stupid, you’re not broken – look at this,” she pointed at his braced arm, “we all saw the grouping, you built this. You’re far from broken.”

 

She gripped him in a vicelike hold, hugging him so tight he thought his lungs might explode. Tears rolled down her cheeks as their lips locked in a heated, needy, kiss.

 

“You scared me so much. I love you Leo Fitz,” she whispered to him softly, “remember, you’re my man from the sky – you’re my hero.”

 

“I love you too,” he whispered back, arms resting on the small of her back as their lips explored each other. “I’ve always loved you.” She let out a slight, arousing sigh when he said that.

 

 “You’re nearly there Fitz, you’re nearly better.” She said while Coulson and May sheepishly left the two young lovers together, “but your condition doesn’t change how much I love you, not at all. Promise me you won’t take the serum again, no matter what happens.”

 

“I promise.” Fitz swore truthfully after deciding for a few moments.

 

“I love you Leo.”

 

“I love you Jemma.”

 

That night, having been released back to the BUS to sleep next to Jemma – he refused to spend another minute next to the buzzing light, Fitz had his first restful night sleep since her fall; free from nightmares and interruptions. Whatever the side effects of the serum, they’d face it together come the dawn, but for now, he simply enjoyed the warmth of their loving embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I decided to add a second, differently styled, chapter and can inform you that there will definitely be a third though I'm not sure when that will be released. I really hope you enjoyed this as it was quite tricky to write compared to the first chapter, if you enjoyed it please leave kudos/comments - I'd love to know what you guys think :)


	3. Wait and See

 

Fitz inhaled that now familiar smell of cordite as his gun flashed in front of him; while he had, in childish fantasies, always pictured himself as a bit of a James Bond – they were both English secret agents after all – he had never really enjoyed shooting in the past. But then, he had never been very good at it either; it had always surprised him that no matter how controlled his hands could be when he created inventions requiring incredibly precise movements, when it came to firing a gun he was hopeless – his whole arm would shake at the distinctive crack that signalled he’d pulled the trigger, throwing any subsequent shots way off target. Yet now, with his arm stabilised mechanically, each time he squeezed the trigger he could hit almost the same mark as before and, with May guiding him, he was hitting the target more and more. He still preferred the ICER to a real gun, in part because no matter how much he tried he couldn’t escape the memory of him murdering a HYDRA agent at the Hub, but the practice was good for his coordination. He also had to admit that there was something oddly cathartic and stress reducing about visiting the gun range in the middle of the night to take out his frustrations on whatever designs he was trying to put together.

 

He wasn’t the only one with difficulty sleeping either, and while Mack still helped around the lab for some reason he would only rarely join Fitz in the training range. Instead, Fitz often found Skye in there in the middle of the night, or May. What with Coulson’s light almost always on in his office, Morse and Hunter’s… _sessions…_ and Koenig seeming to lurk about the shadows, it seemed like it was only really Jemma who got a good night sleep around the Playground, and even then he’d found her reading in the BUS a number of times when he returned from his late night building or shooting. It was little wonder Coulson kept complaining about the budgets – Fitz dreaded to think what the bill for caffeine related products must be. They’d long since run out of the 1970s sachets they’d had to use for the first few months of being at the Playground, he wondered how exactly Coulson supplied it – whether there was a dropoff point just for the coffee. He almost laughed at the idea, also wondering whether he should build robotic enhanced arms for everybody on the team to deal with the tea/coffee induced shaking.

 

“You’re shooting too far right,” Skye said to him, surprising him – it wasn’t unusual to find her awake and at the range, but he hadn’t heard her come in.

 

“I know, I might be… I might have… _difficulties…_ but I’m not blind,” he stammered out.

 

“You sure about that?” Skye asked, a playful smile across her lips told Fitz she was about to say something that would make him uncomfortable, “Help me understand something Fitz; you’ve been in love with Simmons since you met her, you jumped out of a plane to save her, she tells you she loves you too and rather than be with her, in your own bed, you’re here…”

 

Fitz rolled his eyes at her “It’s not that simple, I can’t… sleep.”

 

Skye grinned at him, “I wish I had that problem, since HYDRA the number of eligible bachelors has dropped quite considerably,” Skye joked teasingly, laughing as Fitz’s cheeks reddened from a mixture of embarrassment and indignation.

 

“It’s not like that. We’re not… We haven’t–” Fitz started, but couldn’t finish before Skye cut across him.

 

“Wait. You guys haven’t had sex yet?” Skye asked with genuine surprise written across her face. Fitz frowned, though he’d be lying if he said something about the way she said yet had excited him slightly. Somehow it made the relationship feel more real than any of the kissing or declarations of love.

 

“Well, not exactly.” Fitz admitted, suddenly feeling slightly inadequate under her gaze and putting his empty gun on the table in front of him.

 

“What does _not exactly_ mean?” Skye asked, taking a step towards Fitz – leaving him with the distinctive urge to break out of this awkward interrogation. “You’ve kissed her, yeah?”

 

“Of course,” Fitz shot back defensively, as though his pride had been wounded.

 

“Have you kissed her… everywhere?” Skye asked with a mischievous glint in her eyes. As she took another step forward, closing the gap between them, Fitz took a step back.

 

“I, erm, I have to… I have to… get back.” Fitz said, unsure if the pauses were because of hypoxia or because of his natural awkwardness discussing this kind of thing. He accidently knocked a folder full of paper targets onto the floor as he tried to leave.

 

“Seriously? It’s been months now, and you guys are obviously perfect for each other why haven’t you just fu–”

 

“Because I’m still broken.” Fitz blurted out in anger, walking past her to create some space between them, “I’m trying not to be broken but I am. I know it. You’re all thinking it!”

 

The playful expression on Skye’s face changed to one of concern as she realised just how troubled he was. “Fitz, you’re just going to have to trust me, but nobody thinks tha–”

 

“Now you sound like Jemma,” Fitz said bitterly, revealing to Skye the source of the tension between Fitzsimmons. He immediately regretted saying it, in Fitz’s not so humble opinion the less Skye knew the better.

 

“Maybe she’s right?” Skye half asked, half told him, before adding, “Have you ever known her to be wrong?” She was relieved when he let out a slight chuckle, albeit only a brief one.

 

“At night, it’s perfect – she’s perfect, but in the day…” He trailed off, struggling to find the right words and clicking his fingers in frustration as if that would help him concentrate. In the end he demonstrated with his hands, interlocking his fingers, “We used to be like this, we used to… to… connect,” he pulled his hands apart, “how can we _connect,_ if we can’t… connect?” He asked with a frown, clearly unsatisfied by his poor choice of words for a man with two PHDs.

 

“You’ll find a way, you always do.” Skye offered with an optimistic smile more reminiscent of her old, less brooding self – from the days before she dressed all in black and followed Agent May’s example in everything, including humour.

 

“And what if I don’t?” Fitz asked, his voice trembled slightly as he spoke. “What if, this is it? Forever? How can, how…” He stopped, closed his eyes and took in a deep breath.

 

“What Fitz?” Skye asked; her voice surprisingly quiet.

 

“How can she love me, when I’m… like this?” Fitz answered, struggling to keep back tears.

 

“Fitz…” Skye mumbled, for the first time ever since he’d met her, it seemed like she didn’t know what to say.

 

“I need some air.” Fitz cut across coldly, walking out of the gun range in fast strides so she couldn’t catch up with him, not that she followed. He wondered if Tony Stark had felt the same way about his arc reactor in his chest before he had it removed; on the one hand it was an impressive feat but on the other it was debilitating to rely on machinery to live.

 

He had long since memorised the winding corridors of the Playground and walked them now without really registering where he was going, he walked past the lab, noticing that Mack was working on something inside but he didn’t go in. The young scientist merely followed his feet, letting them take him where he needed to go until he had walked beyond the BUS and to the hangar doors. He pressed his lanyard against one of the keycard readers to open an external hatch but it flashed red rather than green. Fitz tried it again, frustrated, before hearing a voice from behind him

 

“Going somewhere?” Koenig asked, his voice as always a confusing mixture of slightly disinterested but oddly curious.

 

“Outside.” Fitz said perhaps more forcefully than he intended.

 

“It’s after curfew,” Koenig pointed out in a matter of fact manner.

 

“Are you going to open the bloody door, or am I going to break it?” Fitz asked, turning on the man in a surprising flash of anger. He didn’t know exactly what expression he would see on Koenig’s face but he guessed it would be somewhere between irritation and concern; he certainly didn’t expect to see amusement.

 

“I’m going to open it,” Koenig half laughed, eyes sparkling, “I could do with getting out for a bit myself.”

 

Fitz felt awkward and, wishing he could retract his anger, mumbled quietly, “Right, well, thanks… I guess…”

 

Koenig’s lanyard made the reader flash a beautifully vibrant shade of green, immediately followed by a satisfying click to signal the hatch was no longer locked. As the two of them strolled outside to a metal walkway overlooking a patch of forest, Fitz closed his eyes, sighing against the cold night air. Koenig spoke first.

 

“Now that your arm’s better have you made any progress on other elements to your recovery?” Koenig asked, attempting to sound nonchalant as he did but his voice betraying a deeper interest.

 

“Will you tell Coulson what I tell you?” Fitz asked, pleasantly surprised that he’d found all the words he needed without gaps.

 

“Probably,” Koenig replied without expression, unnerving Fitz, before he burst into a slight grin, “but it’s not a certainty.” That was about as close to a guarantee of discretion as you could get from Koenig, it was good enough for Fitz.

 

“It’s not better, it’s just patched,” Fitz said, idly running his good hand over his brace and remembering his words to Skye, “This, this isn’t forever.” He added, more for himself.

 

The truth was, as much as Fitz liked the brace, he didn’t want to use it – he didn’t want to _need_ it. Sure, it served some military application; it probably made him more valuable than ever to Coulson and May, if he could just improve his aim anyway, but he couldn’t help feel that it made him less of a person. It acted as a permanent reminder to his own weakness – as if his inability to speak wasn’t enough and, he wasn’t sure if he’d imagined it, but one night Jemma had been running her arms against him and recoiled at the touch of the steel. She said it was just cold but Fitz couldn’t shake the feeling she resented that they no longer had the chemistry they used to together, and if there was one thing Jemma needed it was good chemistry. Fitz almost winced at his bad joke.

 

“As engaging as this conversation has been,” Koenig said sarcastically after the period of extended silence, “if I don’t get back inside where it’s warm my circuits are going to freeze up.”

 

Fitz turned and saw a gleeful smile play across Koenig’s face, the man enjoyed teasing people with false clues about who, or indeed _what_ , he and his seemingly endless supplies of brothers actually were. “Well we wouldn’t want that,” Fitz replied, shooting him a wry smile, “I’m not as good with repairing circuits as, as I used to be.”

 

Koenig beamed at him, slapping him on the shoulder in what Fitz was sure was meant to be friendly but was slightly to forceful. The not-quite-man walked towards the hatch that had taken them outside, and jibed quickly before entering, “I could always ask Mack.”

 

Fitz grinned in spite of himself, looking back out at the night sky and enjoying the feel of the cold air in his lungs. Koenig could sometimes be annoying with his strict adherence to policy and borderline neurotic obsession with lanyards but of all the people at the Playground, assuming he was a person, he took himself the least seriously. Their conversations were often short, like tonight, and Fitz’s grasp on words seemed to come and go. Sometimes he could almost string whole sentences together and then at others, it was as though his vocabulary and the connections he had made so easily in the past were just beyond his reach. If he closed his eyes and reached forward he could practically touch the word he was looking for, but more often than not it would slip past the very tops of his fingers tantalisingly, leaving him searching in the dark.

 

He was distracted from his thoughts by the sound of the hatch unlocking behind him, assuming Koenig had forgotten something he joked “Miss me already?”

 

It was Simmons’ small voice that answered him, almost lost in the wind. “Yes.”

 

“Jemma?” Fitz wheeled around in surprise to find her standing out there in her pyjamas, unshed tears glistening in her eyes, “what are, what are you…” he struggled before changing tact, “why are you here?”

 

“I spoke to Skye,” she said, her voice shaking as she stepped closer to him. They were just inches apart now, Fitz’s heart stopped beating; he hadn’t meant to tell Skye anything, it had just kind of happened. “I love you Leo Fitz, _nothing_ will change that.”

 

“But, why?” Fitz practically whispered, terrified of her answer, “how could you when I’m–”

 

“I swear if you say broken one more time I’ll–” Jemma cut across him, but was herself unable to finish whatever threat she was about to make before their lips collided. The kiss was needy and passionate, full of years of still unresolved emotion; when it broke, they found themselves gasping.

 

“You must be freezing,” Fitz said after a few moments, remembering she was still out there in just her pyjamas.

 

She laughed nodding, folding her arms against her chest for warmth and practically bouncing on the balls of her feet. “Aren’t you observant?” she quipped, teeth chattering slightly as the tears that had been brimming in her eyes rolled down her cheeks freely.

 

“Perhaps we, we should,” Fitz grimaced as he tried to find the words, she looked at him hopefully, “go inside?”

 

“Perhaps we should,” Jemma said playfully, seemingly relieved that it hadn’t taken him too long to speak, normally she wouldn’t mind waiting for as long as it took but it was _very_ cold and she had been in such a rush since Skye woke her up she hadn’t even put on shoes.

 

They practically jogged back to the BUS as Jemma was so cold and even as they made their way up the cargo ramp Jemma almost sprinted up the stairs into the heated area of the plane. Mack’s garage was as cold as the hangar, and that was only marginally less cold than the air outside. The run had made them both laugh, they felt like young lovers eloping together to their own secluded spot – after all, nobody slept on the BUS except them and occasionally Mack if he worked late there. They were more than a little surprised, then, to find Skye talking with Koenig in the main hub of the plane by the holographic table. Skye and Koenig looked up almost conspiratorially before offering them tea. For some reason Americans always offered them tea; not that he minded in this instance, after all, Fitz and Simmons did drink and enjoy a _lot_ of tea, but the occasional coffee or hot chocolate wouldn’t be amiss either. It irritated Fitz that everyone always offered British people tea straightaway rather than giving the choice of beverage the rest of the world seemed to enjoy, it was almost as bad as when they tried a Dick van Dyke-esque impression of the British accent. He found himself smiling; no matter how bad things were, it was still the silly things that really riled him up the most.

 

“English Breakfast if we’ve still got any,” Jemma answered for both of them after Fitz had stared blankly into space for several moments, lost in his trail of thought. Skye nodded and immediately busied herself by the bar, Koenig got up and walked in the direction of the cargo ramp, stopping only to crack another one of his jokes.

 

“You know, you humans need to sleep.” He said before sauntering off into the shadows, leaving Fitz and Simmons on their own by the table.

 

Still cold Simmons pressed herself against Fitz for warmth; his arms naturally closed around her and held her tightly. He broke the embrace though, when she shivered as the metal frame from his brace touched her back. Immediately seeing the hurt look on his face Jemma panicked and stepped forward to reassure him, but he stepped back out of reach. “Fitz,” she pleaded as tears rolled down his cheeks.

 

“Don’t,” he warned her, fire burning in his eyes.

 

“It just surprised that’s all, it was cold and–” Jemma took another step forward and, as though in some kind of dance, Fitz instinctively stepped backwards.

 

“Would you rather I took the serum?” Fitz spat out in a condescending tone that reminded him of the argument they’d had through the glass when she was infected, before she fell. Even as he said it he regretted it.

 

She slapped him. It hurt.

 

“How can you ask me that?” This time she took a step backwards, tears springing from her eyes, “how can you ask me that?”

 

“Jemma,” Fitz said, not knowing what else to say.

 

“Two days, Fitz, two days,” Jemma’s voice was cold, “two of the longest days of my life not knowing if you’d wake up.” She seemed to shake at the memory. “I thought I’d lost you. After finding you in the water, after watching you resuscitated only to drown again and then this, Fitz, I can’t lose you.” She paused and collected herself as her tears dripped onto the floor.

 

“Then why can’t you so much as look at my arm?” Fitz asked with a mixture of fear and frustration.

 

“Because it’s my fault!” Jemma blurted out, “Because if you’re broken it’s because of me.” Fitz looked at her in horror as she continued, “If I hadn’t have got infected then you wouldn’t have jumped and we wouldn’t–”

 

“Jemma!” Fitz practically shouted, closing the gap between them and gripping her arms tightly. “It wasn’t, your fault…” He began to trail off before recovering himself, “And if you hadn’t got infected, then we… we wouldn’t be, together.”

 

She melted against him and they held each other for several minutes in silence; Fitz buried his head in her hair as she buried hers on his shoulder. “We’re going to get through this Fitz,” she muttered quietly to him, he nodded in return. “We’re going to get through this.” She repeated quieter, for herself. Their hearts were beating in tandem.

 

“Tea,” Skye announced from the edge of the room, clearly not knowing what to do with the two tear soaked scientists embracing in front of her.

 

Jemma wiped her own tears away before accepting the steaming mug and saying thanks, Fitz half nodded as he was given his, mumbling gratitude almost inaudibly. After an awkward thirty seconds where it was unclear if Skye was staying or going she elected to leave and bid them both goodnight, returning presumably to either her quarters or the gun range. When she left they sipped their hot drinks in silence, enjoying the taste of their home, before climbing into bed together exhausted. They didn’t say anything else before they both drifted off to sleep with Simmons’ head leaning on Fitz’s chest, rising and falling with his breathing and listening to the captivating drumming of his heart beat. She ran her fingers up his metal brace, familiarising herself with every rivet of it and accepting it as part of Fitz. Somehow it felt warmer than before, just because it was part of him.

 

And yet, when she woke up in the morning, he was gone again.

 

…

 

She showered on the BUS – most of the Playground had been built before the Cold War and the water pressure on the showers was appalling in the main compound, not to mention the water had a tendency to run cold intermittently and a distinct taste of rust to it. The BUS, on the other hand, was newly fitted and the showers were amongst the best part of it. She got the worst of the water from her hair but resolved to dry it properly after breakfast; dressing and letting her now auburn curls drop lazily either side of her face. The food on the BUS was better too – most of the team had taken to eating there instead of the sanctioned cafeteria area of the Playground to avoid Koenig’s infamous stodgy porridge, it had tasted almost as bad as those odourless protein bars they had found in one of the boxes in the plane’s storage – they were originally supposed to be joined by another agent but he was called away on assignment a few days before joining the team, which was probably a good thing because, as it turned out, he ended up connected with HYDRA.

 

After breakfast with Skye, who politely asked how Fitz was doing before impolitely asking if they’d had sex yet, Simmons left the BUS in search of her… _boyfriend…_ It felt strange to say it; she turned the word over in her mouth like it was a fine wine. It was at once too serious a word and not serious enough a word for where they were and what they had been through. Rather predictably she found Fitz hard at work in the lab with Mack though, in fairness to herself, Fitz had been spending a large amount of time at the gun range recently; a fact that still unnerved her more than a little.

 

She had no problems with the idea of him learning how to use weapons, she would _almost_ encourage it. She knew he needed to be able to defend himself properly; no matter how much Fitz protested, he had no place being an agent. It wasn’t that he wasn’t brave or smart enough, he certainly had both of those in abundance even with his new setbacks; it was just that he was too kind, too good. Simmons didn’t want him to lose his goodness. Coulson and May – even Skye – are all killers, Coulson and May are _experienced_ killers, and even though Simmons knew Fitz had killed a HYDRA soldier at the Battle of the Hub (Coulson admitted to her that Fitz had saved May’s life), she also knew the act had almost destroyed him. He had hated himself for what he had done, even though he recognised he had to do it.

 

Watching him work with Mack in the lab, it was hard to imagine him killing anyone; he seemed so completely _peaceful._ She was content just to watch him through the glass as he tinkered with his inventions and laughed with Mack, she could have stood there forever – if Skye hadn’t interrupted her.

 

“So when are you guys just going to–” Skye started asking, clearly enjoying how defensive the couple got whenever she mentioned sex. She had correctly identified that they both hated discussing it and seemed to be getting her kicks from making them both uncomfortable.

 

“Skye!” Simmons practically yelled at her, giving her a thump on the arm to reinforce the point.

 

“Alright, alright,” Skye conceded, throwing her hands up in front of her in an overly exaggerated manner to indicate surrender, “I just can’t believe after everything that’s happened–”

 

“I think it’s because of everything that happened,” Simmons said, turning her eyes back to Fitz, thankful that he was still oblivious that he was being watched.

 

“So it’s Fitz?” Skye asked and, when Simmons nodded, let out a deep sigh, “that’s surprising.”

 

“Why?” Simmons asked, reluctantly tearing her eyes away from Fitz to look at Skye.

 

“Haven’t you seen the way he looks at you? The way he has _always_ looked at you? He would do absolutely anything for you, no matter the cost to himself.”

 

Simmons looked back to Fitz as he and Mack burst out laughing at some joke, “I know.” She remembered how he had looked as he fell towards her in the sky, as they dragged him onto the cargo ramp and how pale his face was when he had collapsed from his serum.

 

“He’s afraid,” Skye said after a while.

 

“Of what?” Simmons wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer, right now Fitz looked so happy – the idea of him being anything but joyful made her gut wrench in protest.

 

“Of you,” Skye stated simply, before clarifying, “of you not loving him because he’s different now.”

 

“What can I do?” Simmons asked sheepishly, she didn’t know what to do. She loved him but every time she tried to get closer he’d recoil from her, every time she woke up he was gone, it was like he wouldn’t let her in. They had never used to share anything from each other, except their feelings.

 

“Go to him,” Skye told her, before turning on her heel and leaving, her footsteps ringing out as she walked.

 

Simmons took a deep breath, and then entered the lab.

 

“Hey Fitz,” she called a little too chirpily, causing him to drop the file he was holding. He cursed as he gathered to pick up all the pieces of paper that had spilled out of the binder when it hit the ground. She smiled at him, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes, “What are you working on? The cloaking?”

 

“No… Wait, yes… I’m… I’m just…” He stuttered, attempting to conceal the file he’d been holding from her; awkwardly bringing it to his chest as though he were trying to protect it. The last few weeks had been hard since he’d returned to the BUS, he still couldn’t form proper sentences but even still he was usually more coherent than that. “It’s a… secret,” he stammered before trailing off, trying to ignore the way Simmons had tilted her head in annoyance at being pushed away once again. He didn’t want to push her away of course, but he was so close now, he just needed a little more time on this. Sensing the tension in the room Mack made his excuses and left, patting Fitz on the shoulder before he did.

 

“Fitz…” She asked pleadingly, since the fall she had asked that there be no secrets between them anymore but he didn’t want her to know about this, she’d try to talk him out of it. When she saw he wouldn’t budge on the issue, not even after throwing him one of the pouts that she knew made him go crazy, she switched tact and walked past him altogether to her own workstation. Fitz realised too late he’d left a bunch of papers over there, “Fitz, what is this?” She asked as she reached them; the concern evident in her voice.

 

“Ah, that, well… Jem, the thing… the thing is…” he tripped over his words and his feet as he rushed to swipe the papers off the desk, “you’re not supposed to… it’s not…” he bounced his head around as he tried to find the right word, “ready.” She knew that his problem putting sentences together wasn’t exclusively down to the hypoxia – he was hiding something big from her, she started flicking through the papers in front of her.

 

Her face went pale as she poured over printed copies of various flight simulators; the wrist thrusters from the Iron Patriot armour, the wing designs from Falcon’s suit and even some private documents from Stark Industries showing Tony Stark’s signature miniaturised arc reactor. Fitz’ shaky handwriting could be seen scrawled across every free bit of space alongside small rushed diagrams and equations even she didn’t recognise, though every so often he had clearly got bored and doodled half-finished games of noughts and crosses – if she hadn’t been so worried, she would have smiled at them. “Fitz, what is all this?” she asked, noticing that many of the pieces of paper in front of her were Level 9 classified and adding, “How did you even get these? You’re Level 5 like me.”

 

“Jem I know that I… that I’m not… how I was, but I’m still… good,” He said, wondering whether to abandon his attempt to collect the papers into a pile; the secret was out now anyway, he knew Simmons wouldn’t let this go. Even in spite of this he decided to try to gather them up, “Except, erm, except,” he gestured at the files from Stark Industries when he couldn’t find the words, “those… Skye helped me with those ones.”

 

Jemma’s expression went from concerned to confused to joyous, “You hacked these SHIELD files?” She asked incredulously, handing the Falcon designs she was holding back to him, still not quite having pieced his secret together.

 

“Well, yeah… it’s no big deal, we used to, erm, do it… all the time,” he said, his voice getting quieter as he turned around and walked towards one of the locked storage vaults meant to hold dangerous chemicals but currently housing his secret project. He didn’t want to tell her how long it had taken him to break the security on the files; the old him could have done it in a heartbeat, this new him had spent the better part of three days trying.

 

“I know but Fitz don’t you see? That’s great. Solid proof you’re getting better.” She said, genuine excitement in her voice. “Fitz, you’re–”

 

They both said “almost there” together, but Fitz said it with decidedly less enthusiasm than she did as he tried to remember the six digit key code to his locked storage vault – it was something important to him, he knew that much. He could even remember all the numbers; there was definitely a seven, a nine, an eight, two ones and a zero but he couldn’t for the life of him put them in the right order.

 

“What’s wrong Fitz?” Jemma asked as Fitz slammed his hand against the keypad, closing his eyes and muttering to himself as he did so.

 

“I can’t, it’s just… the code…” Fitz said, grimacing in frustration. He may have begun to get better with sentences but remembering strings of numbers was still very tricky.

 

“Oh it’s 141592, the first six decimal places of pi,” Simmons explained with a smile, thinking she’d solved it for him and slightly confused when he didn’t thank her.

 

“No. It’s not. I changed it…” Fitz spoke in little more than a mutter.

 

“Why?” Simmons asked him but either he didn’t hear or simply ignored her because he kept mumbling to himself.

 

“Let’s see… 101897…” Fitz entered into the keypad and the light next to it flashed red, he hated that light, “No, that’s not it… 101987…” The light blinked red again, laughing at him; Fitz had to fight the frustration to punch it. “110987” The light flashed green, “Yes! It worked, Jem!”

 

He immediately opened the storage vault door and for a brief moment Jemma saw within it perhaps the strangest and most beautiful contraption of treated leather straps and gilded steel cylinders she had ever seen, but before she asked what it was she asked an altogether more important question. “110987… That’s my birthday Fitz, the 11th September 1987…”

 

“Yes, well I had to choose something… erm… memorable,” Fitz told her, smiling at the irony of struggling to remember the word _memorable_ as he hid the papers he’d scooped up in with the strange contraption and then locked the door shut again, sighing when the red light returned.

 

“What is that?” Simmons asked him, gesturing towards the locked vault.

 

“Do you trust me?” Fitz said, his voice returning to normal as he straightened up and walked over towards her. The awkwardness of the last few minutes and his difficulty with words faded away as he closed the gap between them with an air of surprising confidence.

 

She nodded, “I do.”

 

Fitz broke into a wide smile before pressing his lips against hers and drawing her into a tight hold, arms slotting around her back. She gave into the kiss and closed her eyes, enjoying he sensation as they explored each other’s mouths. Neither one of them would ever get bored of the other and, as Fitz broke the kiss, she sighed slightly; tilting her head to allow him to begin trailing his lips across her neck and shoulder. After a couple of moments he whispered softly into her ear. “Then wait and see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, I really hope you enjoyed this update - I had to split the chapter I was hoping to write into two so the story will be longer than I expected, I would really love it if you wouldn't mind leaving a comment to let me know what you enjoyed or what I could do better, it really helps the writing process! :) I thought I'd use this as a chance to explore several of the major relationships and begin writing from SImmons' perspective towards the end as well, please let me know what you think. Once again, hope you enjoy and I'll update as soon as I can.


	4. Home

_SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, 2004._

Simmons frantically paced around her room, running her hands through her hair as she did. Her bedroom was so pitifully small she could only take about five or six steps before she had to turn around walk the other direction; in fact calling her room a bedroom would be misrepresentative, it was closer to a glorified cupboard.

 

 _Fuck._ She thought.She didn’t normally swear – in fact she made a point not to, typically she hated it – but these were exceptional circumstances and she was long past the point of maintaining pleasantries. _Fuck._ She thought again, her lips ghosting the act of saying it. She knew she had had her notebook in Professor Vaughn’s class, and she was _sure_ she had it with her when she got back, but she’d turned her tiny room upside down for it and it was nowhere to be found.

 

“Jemma Simmons, how did you get here?” the 17 year old asked to nobody in particular. She had always been bright – after all, she had finished school early without even trying – she had scored highly in every exam she had ever say and had even received exemplary marks in her first PHD from Trinity College, University of Cambridge. Her second was being peer-reviewed. Truthfully, she had been an outcast there; unable to mingle with the other older students - she could've stayed and sought the earliest tenure the university had ever seen - everything was arranged, at least until she received the letter from the SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, that was. She felt like Hermione Granger as she eagerly read each line; freedom of study, generous funding, lab access and extensive job opportunities. It was perfect, or almost perfect: while Hermione Granger could simply hop on a train to Hogwarts from King’s Cross, Simmons’ studies would take place in America. Sure, SHIELD had European branches but the Academy itself was based across the Atlantic and away from everyone she knew – away from _home_. And now she had lost her notebook too.

 

At this point Jemma Simmons was _more_ than homesick. She hated America, she hated that everyone she met either mocked or imitated her accent (often with little difference between the two), she couldn’t stand the constant heat even in the winter (she never thought she’d miss the oft cold, rainy weather of England), crossing the road was immensely frustrating and terrifying (how was she to know jaywalking was illegal there, or that they drove on the opposite side of the road?) and worst of all, she hated simply that she didn’t know anyone there. She had always wanted to visit America, true, in fact she knew even then that she didn’t really hate America, she probably would have loved her time there had she made more friends, or indeed, any friend. She hated feeling alone, and she had never felt so alone since she left Gatwick Airport two months ago.

 

She threw herself onto her bed, bouncing only slightly as the springs in the mattress had a disappointingly limited amount of give in them, and stared up at the white ceiling. She let out a great sigh as her eyes followed a crack in the paint above her head all the way along the coving to the window – the condensation around which had made the paint bubble slightly. She couldn’t even ring her parents, it may only have been 4:30 in the afternoon for her but it would be night time in England. She found herself wondering what her life would have been like if she’d have stayed and gone to Cambridge instead, the University Library there had a copy of every printed book in existence. She pictured her days working away and then long walks by the River Cam with friends in the evenings. _Friends,_ she sighed, still looking unblinkingly at the ceiling, oblivious of the fact that her eyes were now leaking tears.

 

A rather timid knock on her door broke her from her thoughts, it was so timid, in fact, that she wasn’t sure if it had been on her door or the door next to hers – the walls were very thin. After all, who would come to her room? She called out cautiously, “hello?”

 

“Simmons?” A soft Scottish voice replied as shy as the knock on the door. It felt oddly comforting to hear a Scottish accent so far from home.

 

“Who is it?” She asked back more defensively than she’d intended to, wiping away her tears and walking towards the door to see who it is.

 

“You don’t me but I, erm, well you left your notebook at class.” The Scottish boy replied awkwardly. She opened the door to find him shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

 

“Oh, thank you.” She said as he pushed her notebook into her hands awkwardly. He turned to fast after she accepted it that she practically had to shout out to him or he wouldn’t have heard her, “What’s your name?”

 

He paused for a moment before he reluctantly walked back to face her, “Leo, Leo Fitz,” he answered, seemingly hopeful that he would be able to go back to wherever it was he was going now that he’d given a reply.

 

“Pleasure to meet you Leo, I’m Jemma, Jemma Simmons,” she said in her most polite voice, extending a hand to greet him the way she remembered to in her elocution lessons from school. After a few slightly painful seconds he gave her his own hand and they shook before she opened the door of her room fully and gestured inside, “would you like to come in?” When he looked as though he was about to say no to her offer she tilted her head and said, “please.” He reluctantly agreed.

 

They sat opposite each other: Simmons sat on her bed and Fitz sat on the chair next to her small desk. Fitz broke the tension, “So, you’re from England?”

 

“Yes. That obvious huh?” She nervously joked, hoping she wouldn’t mess this up. “And you’re from Scotland?”

 

“Aye,” he answered and, after another too long pause, asked, “I’m here for engineering, what about you?”

 

“Bio-chem,” her eyes passed over him from the top of his curly brown hair to the bottom of his nicely polished shoes, “A long way from home.”

 

“Aye,” he agreed in little more than a whisper with a slightly pained expression on his face. They spent several moments in silence, each clearly thinking about the world they’d left behind.

 

“What is home, for you, what’s it like?” She asked him, feeling nostalgic enough that she didn’t seem to realise how personal a question it was.

 

“Home?” Fitz asked back slightly surprised, when she nodded he closed his eyes and began imagining it, a peaceful expression immediately settling across his face, “Clean air, large rolling hills of greens and greys, valleys and mountains that rise and fall across the land like the crests of waves immortalised in stone,” he sighed and tilted his head up to look at the ceiling as though picturing the sunlight on him, “the way the sun scatters the morning fog and the frosted ground glistens.”

 

“That’s beautiful,” She said sheepishly, her own home wasn’t nearly as tranquil. London was more of a sprawling hodgepodge of concrete and brick – though admittedly, it wasn’t all that bad, her family lived in a fairly nice area after all.

 

“That’s Scotland,” Fitz smiled at her, clearly realising he’d sounded like a tourism commercial. “It rains a lot too.” He added and they both laughed, breaking the tension in the room, “What about you, what’s home for you?”

 

“London – not nearly as picturesque,” She quipped calmly and watched as a smirk played across Fitz’s face, “but we spent some time living on the Isle of Wight, that _was_ beautiful.”

 

“Who’s we?” Fitz asked, his eyes shining enthusiastically – she didn’t know it but this was the longest non-work related conversation he’d had since he’d arrived.

 

“My parents and me,” She smiled thinking of them both, “And you? Who have you got back in Scotland?”

 

“It’s just me and my mum,” he said before adding, “and a few friends of course, but mainly just me and my mum.” Simmons watched his eyes dilate as he drifted amongst his thoughts.

 

“Do you miss it?” Simmons asked, breaking him from his mind and having to clarify what she meant when Fitz looked at her quizzically, “Home, I mean.”

 

“Aye,” Fitz answered, slipping into his Scottish accent, “I do.”

 

After a few moments Jemma said in a voice little more than a whisper, “me too…” She trailed off before leaning her head back against the wall and closing her eyes, “tell me more about Scotland, about your home.”

 

“There’s not that much to tell really,” Fitz said, shifting on his seat slightly and pausing, hoping she’d interrupt him but when she didn’t he continued, “Well I live in a small village quite close to the middle of nowhere; we have a shop with a post office, a church and two pubs, which tells you something about the Scottish mindset. Who needs decent internet when you can have alcohol?” He was pleased to see she smiled at his lame joke, and then added more seriously, “but it really is a breath taking place: I used to take long walks starting from the Killearn Glen, miles and miles across the fens to the edge of Queen Elizabeth Forest Park – by Loch Lochmond – have you ever been?”

 

“No,” Jemma admitted but, seeing Fitz look obviously disheartened, promptly said, “but I’ve always wanted to.”

 

Fitz smiled, “perhaps I’ll take you there one day?” He offered, leaning forward and putting an arm on her shoulder.

 

She tried to smile at him but just couldn’t, the emotion she’d been feeling for the last two months started to bubble up inside her. She really was beyond homesick. “What are we doing here Fitz? We don’t–”

 

“Belong.” He finished her sentence for her. The corners of his lips twitched upwards slightly as he squeezed her arm reassuringly, “It’ll be alright Jemma.”

 

“What makes you so sure?” She asked, feeling her eyes water slightly.

 

“Because we’re not alone anymore,” he grinned at her before seeming to remember something and standing up abruptly, “I have to go now, but if you want we could sit together tonight – at hall?”

 

“That sounds good,” She said, smiling genuinely at him.

 

“Alright then,” his eyes flashed as he spoke in an overly formal manner complete with slight bow, “It was a pleasure to meet you Jemma Simmons.”

 

“You too Leo.”

 

As the door closed behind him she lay back down on the bed thinking, _maybe things aren’t quite as bad as I thought._

 

 ---

 

_The Playground, 2014._

 

“Do _you_ know what he’s working on?” Simmons asked Mack as they cleared up the lab for the night. She was trying not to act too interested, but Fitz’s secret project concerned her more than slightly; she’d never known him to keep a secret from her in the past, other than his feelings. Thinking about it properly, it wasn’t even the fact that he had a secret project that bothered her; it was the distance between them. They had at once never been so close or far apart: by night they were the model of a perfect couple, well they _almost_ were anyway _,_ but by day it felt like they just drifted apart. Simmons didn’t want to give voice to her real fears about why they couldn’t quite _connect_.She wasn’t even sure if she should ask Mack, after all, they weren’t close – united only by their shared concern in Fitz, and nowadays Fitz seemed to spend more time with Mack than he did her, or, at least, it felt that way.

 

“Beats me, half the time I don’t know what’s going on that mind of his,” Mack replied in his usual cheery manner, lifting a particularly heavy box filled with colourful test tubes onto a cabinet.

 

“Careful with that,” Jemma snapped at him instinctively, though she really needn’t have been worried; those ridiculous muscles of his could probably lift two or three of those boxes without him breaking a sweat.

 

“I’ve got it,” Mack reassured her, grunting as he set the box down in place before turning to look at her directly, eyes shining with care and concern, “if you really want to know what he’s up to, why don’t you just ask him?”

 

“I’ve tried, he won’t tell me,” she admitted, she didn’t know why but she felt completely at ease around Mack, it was as though he exuded some kind of warmth that made him easy to talk to. Of course, it paled in comparison to the ease she used to feel around Fitz before she jumped.

 

“I’m sure he has his reasons,” Mack said reassuringly, shooting her a small smile, “just give it time.”

 

“You really have no idea what it is, aren’t you helping him build it?” Simmons asked; her attempt at hiding how desperate she was to find out what he was up to failing. She couldn’t believe how it was affecting her, she felt like he was driving her mad; he had used her birthday for the code – even if he had now, regrettably, changed it. She never thought she’d be the type of girlfriend who wanted to know exactly what her boyfriend was up to, and for the most part she wasn’t – she didn’t have to be, Fitz told her everything anyway – but whatever he was building he’d been working on for weeks, it involved her somehow and the brief glimpse she saw of the whatever-it-is had looked beautiful. For some reason though, it filled her with equal parts curiosity and dread, Simmons was afraid.

 

“Look, truth is, he doesn’t need my help anymore – with that arm thing of his he’s as good as he ever was, well at least physically, I think he just asks me there for the company. And as for what he’s designing, I’ve no idea, we only ever work on parts of it,” Mack grinned slightly, “besides, I’m not sure he could explain what we were doing even if he tried.” When Simmons looked troubled and didn’t respond Mack reached out and held her shoulder reassuringly, speaking softer, “this is a good thing; he needs a project right now. And he’s in good hands, he’s got you hasn’t he? And just about everyone around here is looking out for him.”

 

Simmons mouthed the word “thanks,” and he nodded at her, giving her shoulder a slight squeeze for support before turning around and walking away, leaving her standing alone in the lab. She looked around at the various worktables and stations; despite its limitations this was probably the best lab she had ever worked in and yet she’d give it up in a heartbeat to return to the BUS instead, get rid of all Mack’s bikes and rebuild their old workspace just the way it was. She smiled at the idea, remembering the energy she used to feel just being around Fitz, how they would bounce ideas off one another and would finish the other’s sentences. She missed those days; if only they’d admitted how they felt earlier she might have enjoyed them all the more.

 

The door slamming behind her distracted her from her thoughts.

 

“Jemma,” Fitz’s Scottish voice cut across the lab. Her heart skipped a beat in excitement and restless anxiety. He sounded slightly surprised and confused, as though he wasn’t expecting anyone to be there. When she turned to look at him she saw him looking somewhat flustered as he struggled to carry a small mountain of files and folders, attempting not to drop them as he veered towards a piece of clear workspace. She suppressed the urge to turn and run, to bury herself from her guilt.

 

“Fitz,” She smiled, walking up to him and helping him with what looked like a bureaucrat’s nightmare, taking half of the pile and dropping it onto a nearby free worktop. He let out a great sigh as he set the other half down before bursting into a wide grin. She instinctively hugged him and pressed a brief, soft kiss on the cheek, enjoying how warm his skin felt against her lips.

 

“How, how are you?” He asked her in the ever awkward and slightly stuttered fashion that she seemed to find so endearing. In many ways it wasn’t so dissimilar from how he’d been before: sure, he could no longer string long scientific sentences together but, now that she thought of it, Fitz had never been very good at small talk, or normal talk, or in fact any non-science talk in general.

 

“I’m good, very good actually, just thought I’d drop by and check in on you,” she smiled at him; she could never quite get enough of how nervously he acted around her, his shyness made her feel special. It was only when he frowned that she realised that what she said sounded more like she was checking in on him because he was, well, _the way he was_ , than because he was her boyfriend, and she had every right to check on him.

 

“You don’t have to drop in and check on me–” Fitz started but was immediately interrupted.

 

“That’s not what I meant–” She tried to explain but was, herself, cut across.

 

“You don’t have to…” he paused to make sure she wasn’t going to interrupt if he kept speaking and, when she didn’t, he continued, “You don’t have to, because, erm, because… this is your lab too Jem, this is _our_ lab.”

 

Jemma wished she could see it that way; the lab was many things but it wasn’t their lab. Their lab was back on the BUS. When he saw that she was still lost in thought he came and gave her a hug which most people would have described as socially uncomfortable, but that to her was the most reassuring feeling in the world. Love poured off of him in waves, she had no idea how she had never noticed it before for all these years. Although later she would tell Skye that they held each other in the Lab for what felt like a lifetime, it would be closer to the truth to say that Fitz held her. When at last they reluctantly pulled apart from the warm embrace she missed him immediately, she had to fight the urge to throw her arms around him again in an attempt just to be closer together. Fitz eyed her curiously.

 

“So what’s all this for?” She asked slightly too cheerily before indicating to the mountain of papers now sprawled across one of the lab tables in an attempt to make the obviously-worried-about-her Fitz a little less worried about her.

 

“It’s, erm, it’s… for the project,” he said, looking away slightly as though he were ashamed and shifting uncomfortably on his feet.

 

“Oh, _the project_?” Jemma asked him; emphasising the words to point out that simply saying the project didn’t really clarify anything for her. When he nodded sheepishly but refused to elaborate any further on what it was he was building she continued, “Would you like me to go?”

 

“No,” Fitz said with surprising speed. Fear flicked across his eyes and his entire posture changed; he straightened himself up and furrowed his brow, squaring his jaw in resolution, “I could never want that Jemma… _never…”_ He wore the same face he had when he had jumped from the plan: his gaze was singular and intense; it pierced straight through her, radiating warmth wherever it fell. For the second time in such a short conversation she found herself questioning how she could ever have thought that he didn’t love her. After a few moments he dropped his shoulders back into a slouch and let a slight smile roll over his lips before saying softly, “Stay Jem, please… I was going to look for you anyway.”

 

She always loved it when he called her Jem instead of Jemma; somehow it made her feel special, as though she were his very own priceless gem. And, truthfully, Fitz did look on her as if she were the most beautiful, valuable and wonderful thing in existence. His eyes smiled warmly at her, sparkling, before he pressed his braced hand against her cheek; she didn’t flinch under the cold metal. She did however flinch when she felt it shaking against her. Instinctively reaching up she held it with her own hands and, feeling it tremble as she did, looked at him with worry.

 

“Fitz?” She asked, full of fear at the steady tremor running through his fingers, “your hand…”

 

He gave a pained smile, “I can’t use the… the, erm, the brace,” he sighed at finding the right word before pressing on, “all the time or I’d never, never get better.” She smiled at him, a tear rolling down her cheek. Despite everything that had happened, that was still happening,

Fitz still had hope for his future – _their_ future. After a surprisingly long period of silence between them where they simply enjoyed the presence of each other’s company Fitz spoke out. “I’m waiting for, well…” He trailed off, clearly hiding something and changed the subject, “Koenig found some old lemon cake, it’s not bad… for tinned food anyway, there should be some left.”

 

“Lead the way,” she said simply; of all the times guys had asked her out for food, which was admittedly less often than you would expect, scavenging the remains of Cold War era tinned lemon cake was undoubtedly the least glamorous event she had been invited to and yet, somehow, it had more heart in it than all of the others combined. It was Fitz who asked her, so how could she say no?

 

On the way towards the lunchroom Fitz’s hand instinctively took Jemma’s and although it brought Fitz comfort, the constant trembling only made her anxious. She found herself wishing he would just switch the brace on so he didn’t have to handle the constant frustration of his own arm not responding properly to what he wanted. She wished that he could be like before the fall – not for her sake, but for his. That he was alive was enough for her; watching Coulson and the team bring him back to life only to watch him drown again on the cargo ramp of the BUS had been the most heart breaking experience she had ever had, she knew then that a world without Leo Fitz was a world she had no interest in living in. Yet watching him beat himself up daily because of how he was, because of what she did to him by jumping from the BUS, it was almost enough to make her wish that she had hit him harder, that he never would have woken up with enough time to dive for her, that he would still be the way he was.

 

Every time she looked at him, every time she watched him struggle with words or drop things or spend sleepless nights working, all she could think about was that it was her fault. She did this. While she could never wish that she hadn’t met Fitz, she found herself wishing that Fitz had never met her – maybe that way he would have stayed at Sci-Ops away from all the bloodshed and hellfire that made up their lives now. The trembling in his hand made her gut wrench in response to the knowledge that Fitz’s life would be better without her in it. _If only he would turn that bloody brace on…_ She knew better than to ask him to though, Fitz would do what he thought was right, and if he wanted to rebuild the control and strength of his arm again then she wouldn’t stop him. She just wanted there to be an easier way, she wanted to be able to squeeze him tight and take away the anguish he must be feeling _because of her…_ Somewhere, deep down, she was _guilty_ for his predicament, even though Simmons knew Fitz didn’t think that way, she didn’t understand why.

 

“Fitz,” she said quietly, not realising until after they stopped and he turned to look at her that she had actually spoken out loud. She froze for her a few moments, it seemed it was her time to be lost for words, before she eventually stumbled out, “Why don’t you… hate me?” When he said nothing and just stared at her she continued, “You have more than enough reason to so why don’t you?” He paused for a few moments, seemingly unable to comprehend what she had said, before he broke into a smile and spoke, half laughing.

 

“Hate you?” He asked incredulously, “Jem I love you, how could I hate you?” She felt herself mellow slightly but nonetheless recoiled, fearful.

 

She squeezed his shaking hand, “I did this to you, it was my fault; if I hadn’t stepped off the plane then you wouldn’t have jumped–”

 

“Jem,” He said calmly but either she didn’t hear or she ignored him because she kept speaking.

 

“You wouldn’t have drowned and–“

 

“Jemma.” He was more forceful this time and yet still she continued.

 

“You would be ok.”

 

“Jemma!” He half shouted just as she finished, before adding quieter, “It’s ok… I’m ok… really Jem, I am.”

 

“No.” She said, tears welling up from behind her eyes and spilling freely down her cheeks, “You’re not ok Fitz,” Fitz moved to comfort her but she stepped backwards; her tears ran along her jaw and collected under her chin, dripping droplets onto the concrete floor beneath, “None of this is ok. This place… When did this become our life Fitz? We’re scientists, not spies or soldiers… and HYDRA… We don’t belong here. I wish we’d never joined SHIELD.”

 

“Well I’m glad we joined SHIELD,” Fitz told her before closing the gap between them and gripping her in a tight embrace, “I love you Jem… absolutely and forever.”

 

“I love you Leo,” She said, burying her head into his shoulder, drying her wet cheeks on his shirt. “But I just want to go _home…”_ She didn’t care how childish she sounded, she missed her parents and London, she even missed the Academy though she doubted there was anything left there now. “Fitz, we don’t belong here.”

 

“No,” He mumbled so quietly she almost missed it, “We do… _belong_ here.” He lifted her chin up with his good hand and cupped her face, running his thumb across her cheekbone and his fingers through her hair. “This is home now. You are my _home_.”

 

She couldn’t help but smile, even at the cost of tasting her tears on her lips, “what about Scotland?” she meekly quipped, “Isn’t that your home?”

 

“Well yes,” he joked, shooting her a lopsided grin, before becoming more serious and staring at her through his infinitely loving eyes, “But, you’re more than that to me.”

 

The ensuing kiss was passionate and heated, a frantic mix of teeth and tongue as they battled to touch and to taste as much of each other as possible. Their lips were locked tightly as Fitz gently tilted her head further into their kiss with his good hand, gently caressing her side with his other one. He took several steps forward until she was leaning against the wall before he broke the kiss and pressed his lips along her neck, enjoying the small sighs she made. She pushed herself into him in an effort to be closer together while her arms ran down his back and pulled him further. She felt his hand beginning to rise up her side towards her breast and surrendered completely to a base need for him. She loved Fitz, she loved him fiercely and entirely and with everything that had happened, that was still happening, she felt an insatiable and utterly animalistic urge for them to be together, to _connect._ She pushed her fingers under his shirt and dug them into his back, while his own fingers lightly grazed the skin around her nipple. Even through her shirt and bra, she gasped and sought out his lips, he groaned softly as they began anew their battle of mouths. Everything faded from her except Fitz, her hands explored him, ran all over him, around his neck, his face, through his hair. She yielded completely until a voice rang out from behind them, bringing her crashing back to reality.

 

“Fitz.” Coulson said flatly, clearing his throat as they reluctantly broke apart from each other. Fitz blushed a fierce shade of scarlet and tucked his shirt back in while Simmons tried to correct her hair from where Fitz had ran his fingers through it.

 

“Coulson…” Fitz stuttered and stood instinctively in front of Simmons, instinctively ready to take the blame. Coulson’s face betrayed no emotion.

 

“May’s looking for you Fitz, she asked if you still need her to pilot the BUS.” Coulson told him, his eyes flicking between Jemma and Fitz.

 

“Right, yes,” Fitz replied, “is she, ready… now?” He asked, running his hand across his upturned collar in an attempt to make the situation look less like Coulson had walked in on two teenagers. He failed.

 

“She is,” Coulson said before twitching his lips into a smile, “But she doesn’t like waiting so whatever this is,” he looked between them both and raised an eyebrow, “It’ll have to wait until later.”

 

“Yes sir,” Fitz answered, his blush deepening even further as Coulson walked away, a slight spring in the man’s step.

 

“What was that about?” Simmons asked after Coulson had turned the corner, breathing a sigh of relief.

 

“I’ll show you,” Fitz replied with a look of joy on his face, turning on the brace on his arm and flexing his fingers to check it was working.

 

Simmons could barely keep up as he rushed back to the lab, calling out for her to grab the one red file amongst the mountain they’d left sprawled on the worktop as he unlocked the storage unit that held his secret project. She hadn’t seen him look so excited in some time, possibly since before he fell, and for the briefest of moments she had the old Fitz beaming at her from across the lab, his mind a mystery of ideas and inventions. She didn’t even have time to look at the file she was holding before he grabbed her hand with his good one and led her out of the lab and towards the cargo ramp of the BUS, his mysterious invention held tightly in his other arm. May was waiting for them on the ramp.

 

“Everything set?” May asked, “Have you told her yet?”

 

Fitz shook his head as they boarded the BUS; he lifted his project up onto the worktop Mack had set up where their lab used to be. As Jemma looked at it she noticed it was in fact not one invention but two separate ones.

 

“How high?” May asked Fitz, closing the ramp door behind them.

 

“3,000 feet.” Fitz answered, tinkering with a few things on his inventions before turning to Simmons and holding out his hand, “the red folder.”

 

“What are they?” She asked him, feeling slightly nervous.

 

“They fly,” He said with a grin and bright eyes that would have reassured her had he not then said, “or at least they should.” He lifted one of the flight stabilisers up and brought it towards Jemma, even with its crude, unpainted finish it was by far one of the most beautiful designs she’d ever seen; some parts of it were clearly heavily influenced by Tony Stark’s Iron Man and Iron Patriot while others looked entirely original.

 

“You built this?” She said, eyeing the detailed work that had clearly gone into every solder of the invention. At first glance the device on was not unlike putting on a bullet proof vest – both were surprisingly heavy and both had two arm holes and a zip running up the front, though that was about where the similarities ended. Fitz’s invention also involved a biomechanical exo-suit that slotted over the wearer’s clothes; the design of which was similar to that of the brace on his arm. On the upper arm, elbow, thigh and shin were cylinders she surmised must be thrusters; each attached to a series of different joints to allow them to freely rotate. She grunted upon donning the invention and realised that Fitz’s brace must have load bearing capabilities as well as help his fine motor skills as there was no way he was strong enough to carry both the stabilisers with one hand normally.

 

She was surprised to find that despite the metal framework that now ran along her arms and legs she didn’t feel trapped; each section was perfectly measured to accommodate full movement – it was just a pity the thing weighed so much, she could barely stand. It made her especially frustrated to see that when Fitz put on his suit he had no problem with the weight at all. It was quite interesting seeing the suit on someone else; it made it clearer what each component was doing. She saw that the main thrusters could be found on the back panel below the parachute, his suit connected to the brace on his arm as though the brace were a part of it. It was only when she dropped to her knees from the weight of the suit that he ran over to her to adjust it, typing numbers into a small LCD screen attached to its front from the red file she had brought him.

 

“And there we go…” He said to himself as he heard a slight hissing from her suit. Almost immediately the weight was lifted from her shoulders and it barely felt like she was wearing a thing. “Hydraulics weren’t, erm, weren’t…” he looked at her for help but managed to find the word just before she could say it, “calibrated!” He half shouted before he handed her a weighted glove to wear on one hand, filled with a series of markers.

 

When he didn’t put one on for himself, she asked, “What about you?”

 

“I already have them,” he told her, gesturing to his arm with the brace. Though the bruises from the serum had faded, there were still dark purple blotches above each of the markers he and Mack had injected.

 

“Are you sure about this?” Jemma asked timidly as the plane’s engine started and it began its ascent.

 

“This could give us an edge over HYDRA,” he said stretching his arms out in front of him to test the response of the suit, “but… that’s not why we’re doing this.”

 

She eyed him curiously, “Why are we doing this Fitz?”

 

He looked towards the ground, “When I was falling, after I jumped… for just a moment I felt… _peaceful…”_ He paused and looked up directly into her eyes but even as they met each other’s his were glassy and unfocussed. When he spoke he spoke quickly and had to blink away tears. “It was cold, Jem, like ice setting from the inside out… The fall took away so much Jem… I try and I try but no matter what I do, I just can’t quite… things that used to be _so_ easy… I’m done falling Jemma – and with this, we can fly.”

 

She nodded at him, before asking. “How do we fly these?”

 

“We don’t,” he grinned, admiring his own genius, “they fly based on your movements… Skye helped, a lot.”

 

“Anything I should know?” Simmons asked him, love written plainly across her face.

 

“The thrusters start after thirty seconds… oh and oxygen,” Fitz blurted out and indicated to a canister attached by his stomach – she had one in the same place on her suit – “Just in case… everything else is automatic.”

 

“And you’re sure about this?” She knew how Fitz could be and wanted to give him every opportunity to change his mind.

 

“We’re approaching 3,000 feet,” May’s voice came from over the intercom, followed immediately by the sound of the cargo hatch opening. Wind tore at them as they walked towards the edge, hand in hand.

 

“Do you trust me Jem?” Fitz asked one last time.

 

“I do.” She answered truthfully.

 

They said “I love you,” together and stepped into the unknown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The longest chapter I've ever written, I hope you liked it. These updates take an awful lot of effort so, if you have the time, I'd love to hear what you think about the story - whether you think I should keep going with it outside of the one more chapter I have planned, what you would like to see etc. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and would like to thank everybody whose left kudos and supported me this far :)


	5. Secret

_Leo Fitz_

 

The taste of blood was strong in his mouth; a full assessment of his physical state would have to wait until they weren’t being shot at but at a guess Fitz estimated he’d fractured at least three ribs, quite possibly broken his nose and dislocated two fingers on his right hand – his _good_ hand. HYDRA had struck out at them from nowhere, one moment they were in the air headed for Puerto Rico and the next, May had screamed out to hold on before the entire plane shook violently. A few very bright flashes and loud bangs later and the fuselage tore apart, jettisoning anything and anyone that wasn’t bolted down. Now, he had no idea where he was and couldn’t make out many landmarks through the dense jungle foliage they had landed in. Despite his condition he was already on his feet working through which countries had this kind of ecosystem – he wasn’t in Puerto Rico that’s for sure (they were too far away at impact), maybe Haiti, or the Dominican Republic.

 

The young scientist groaned in pain and wondered how the rest were faring – Skye was with him, he knew she was hurt but he didn’t know the extent of the damage. Neither Morse nor Hunter were on the BUS when it was hit – they were with Tripp and Mack on the Quinjet – and he hadn’t seen what happened to Simmons, she was in her bunk reading when the plane was hit whereas he had been on the hold by Mack’s garage. Koenig had been on the stairs when the plane broke apart and the last thing Fitz saw of him was him disappearing into a small speck, arms still holding onto the staircase railing. As for Coulson and May, they were both in the pilot’s cabin strapped down. Not that he expected they had fared any better than him or Skye, in fact he suspected they were worse, _much_ worse. Fitz knew from the enormous plume of smoke rising from the treeline in the distance that the fuel in the BUS’ wings must have ignited – probably on impact. If anyone was still in the BUS when it touched down they would be… _gone…_

 

Oddly, Fitz didn’t feel anything at all – he knew he _should_ be worried for them, he knew he _should_ be utterly petrified but the young scientist was in shock. His mind was cold and focussed: If Jemma had still been on the plane when Fitz fell then there was a chance, no matter how small, that he would find her at the crash site, therefore the only thing that mattered to him was getting to the BUS’ wreckage; he would deal with whatever awaited him there once he found it. But first he had the matter of Skye’s broken arm to deal with, not to mention his own not insignificant injuries. When the BUS was hit he and Skye were chatting by the cargo ramp and he instinctively ran to get his flight simulators (still left there from him and Simmons’ skydiving session) but before he had even managed to strap anything but the main harness to himself the plane had ripped apart and he had been forced to initiate the suit without any of the thrusters in the right place. This act had unfortunately led to some rather severe burns on his thigh and left forearm where the thruster’s flames were too close to him, his thin long sleeve shirt did nothing to protect him and left his raw and heavily blistered flesh exposed to the air. His brace, too, had suffered fire damage leaving it warped and broken, weighing down his shaking arm.

 

Being only half connected to his flight simulator the machine had barely responded to his commands and with the BUS descending faster than the maximum capacity of his suit even in peak conditions, he couldn’t get to anybody else except Skye – who was with him on the ramp but couldn’t fasten one of his suits in time. The fact that he had caught her surprised him, he had to switch off the thrusters altogether to try and reach her, relying on weight to get to her in midair like he did with Jemma all those months ago. When he finally reached her he had just enough time to reengage the suit before a very bumpy landing left them both with more cuts and bruises than either had ever had. If they could see how they looked, covered as they were in mud, sweat and blood, they would have thought they’d both been through the makeup department at a 1980s slash-horror flick. As it was, the mere sight of the other was enough to hammer home just how much trouble they were in; they had no food, no water and no way of knowing how far Mack and the team were from them, or how far HYDRA soldiers were away either. Fitz cursed as he picked up the remains of his battered radio unit and threw it into the nearby foliage, it was damaged far beyond repair even for his skillset.

 

After taking off his flight simulator Fitz immediately set about tending to Skye, helping her against a nearby tree stump and assessing her state. Jemma was always better at physical inspections than he was but even he could see what was wrong. Other than the broken arm Skye had sprained her wrists trying, unsuccessfully, to cushion the rough landing they’d had and worse still was a nasty red patch spreading across her white shirt from her side. He pulled up her now stained top and found the problem immediately, a small piece of shrapnel was pressed inside her, not four inches across from her abdomen. When it caught slightly on her shirt she shrieked so loudly it surprised him – he jumped backwards, tripping on his feet and landing on his burnt patch of arm, cursing loudly.

 

“We need to leave it in,” he half shouted, his voice deep and growling from his own pain. “We don’t have the, erm, the… supplies…” He offered by way of explanation.

 

“I know,” She said through gritted teeth, tears rolling down her face.

 

Content that she had nothing imminently life threateningly wrong with her, the shrapnel was stopping most of the blood loss, and that none of the other cuts were deep enough to cause any lasting damage he turned to himself, straightening out and standing unsteadily. It was only as he stretched that he suddenly became aware of the agony that was wracking his body – the adrenaline and shock had dampened much of the pain until then. All at once he felt the pains of a hundred cuts and scratches, of the deep burns across his thigh and arm, of his dislodged fingers on his right hand. He was light headed, sick, and the soft steady flow of warm blood from somewhere above his brow obscured his vision in one eye. Tears burnt in his eyes but whether they were just from the pain or from fear he couldn’t yet say. His entire left arm was seizing up under the weight of the broken brace and a piece of the frame was sticking uncomfortably into his skin from where it had buckled inwards.

 

“Fitz, you should not be standing – can you see yourself?” Skye asked, wincing in pain as she leaned back against the tree stump. Her arm had a disgusting dark purple mark in the middle where the break was. He ignored her comment, running his two good fingers lightly across his side through his shirt, gasping as their tips brushed over the damaged areas.

 

“Three.” Fitz muttered to himself, answering his question of how many ribs were fractured or broken, before asking louder to her, “How many guns have we got?” He attempted to undo his shirt to take a look at his chest to judge how bad the fractures or breaks were. It wouldn’t help the stinging pain in his lungs but it would at least give him peace of mind and an idea of whether they could press on to the crash site or if they’d have to wait for rescue. The task of undoing his shirt, however, proved much more difficult than he’d expected; with the brace burnt he couldn’t stop his hand shaking and the dislocated fingers on his good arm meant he ended up just pulling the shirt open by tearing off the buttons, grunting as he looked down at the mulberry coloured swelling on his chest.

 

“Unless you brought any just one,” Skye answered; trying to take off one of the two shirts she was wearing (a long sleeve chequered red top worn over her usual white tee shirt) but failed to pull her broken arm out of the sleeve.

 

“I’ll take it,” Fitz told her as he pulled out a small vile from a compartment on his arm brace, letting out a great sigh of relief to find that it was not broken from the fall.

 

“Fitz your brace is busted – I can see that from here, and unless your fingers are meant to look like that,” she said gesturing to his hand with the dislocated fingers, “then somehow I doubt you’ll be able to even hold it, let alone shoot it.

 

“I don’t need the brace Skye,” he told her calmly, closing his eyes as he prepared for what he was about to do.

 

“No! Not a chance!” She yelled at him as she caught sight of the vile of his serum he was holding, “Fitz that stuff almost killed you last time.” She leant forward as if to stop him but was prompted by searing pain from the shrapnel and collapsed back against the tree stump exhausted. Her skin seemed paler than normal.

 

“We’ll both be dead if I don’t,” Fitz said and heard the familiar sound of the delivery mechanism injecting his serum. He gasped and scrunched his eyes tight as that familiar warm and fuzzy pleasure immediately spread around his body, blotting out the pain he was feeling and giving him an unusual clarity of thought.

 

“Fitz!” Skye called out but he remained motionless in the bliss of his serum, his face breaking into a grin so wide that it tore open some of the scabs around his mouth and cheeks.

 

“I’m fine,” he grunted as he came down from the high slightly and walked over to her to take the sidearm holstered on her thigh. Next to the pistol was a single magazine, not more than 20 bullets in total between both it and the rounds already in the gun. “This all?” He asked, hoping she’d shake her head and point out some hidden stash of ammunition. To his dismay, she nodded. He cocked the gun, taking off the safety, and tucked it into his belt for quick access – he still would have preferred his ICER but then, needs must and they were in need. “We have to get moving.” He said, more coldly than he intended.

 

“Well I’m glad you’re feeling better but in case you haven’t noticed I can’t stand,” Skye snapped at him bitterly, her hand closing around the piece of shrapnel as though to prove it. Her breathing was becoming steadily more laboured and he could see her hand with the sprained wrist shaking more than it should.

 

“We can’t stay here,” Fitz answered equally intensely, “HYDRA –”

 

“Will head straight to the crash site.” Skye cut across him, puffing herself up to speak before sinking back from the exertion. “And serum or not you are in no state to fight – how do we know you won’t just drop unconscious again?”

 

“We don’t.” He answered simply and looked around them more fully, taking in their surroundings more fully. The rush of adrenaline seemed to kick start something in him, for the first time since he drowned his thoughts seemed just a little less disjointed. He’d only been speaking in simple sentences but the words were closer than they had been in months. One word in particular hovered in his mind with every passing breath… _Jemma…_

 

“She’ll be alright Fitz.” Skye said after a while, watching him as he struggled to figure out what they should do. Skye knew Fitz was weighing up the option of whether to leave her to find Simmonds or whether to stay and risk HYDRA striking and finishing off whoever was left from the BUS alone.

 

“You don’t know that,” Fitz half yelled, surprised at the anger and panic that was boiling over in him. The odd sense of calm and his ruthlessly pragmatic approach to the situation began to fall apart under the increasing sense of dread and fear he felt for Jemma. He could get there on his own but not with Skye, not in her state, he would have to leave her there.

 

“Was there ever anyone else… except Simmons?” Skye asked, suddenly sounding very tired and frail to Fitz’s ears. She looked it too. The fire she had summoned up to object to him taking the serum had clearly drained her; it was all she could do to stay awake. Her wounds were taking a very heavy toll on her – he couldn’t leave her there, and yet they couldn’t stay either.

 

“No,” Fitz said quietly, knowing it was the truth. Since the moment he set eyes on her, the first friendly face he’d met at the Academy, he knew she was the one for him. Despite his complete faith in his science he couldn’t explain how he knew that, he just knew that he did.

 

“Then go…” Skye breathed out, groaning as she leant her head back against the branch. The colour seemed to drain from her face yet further with each passing moment and she gave a couple of sickly coughs. He couldn’t believe how much he missed her usual smile.

 

“I’ll not leave you.” He promised her, inwardly cursing himself for even considering the idea. She wouldn’t likely survive long on her own even if they weren’t being hunted for by HYDRA, and suppose he got killed she would be left to slowly bleed out with no way of calling for help. The chances of Mack and the rest of the team finding them without a tracking beacon and in forested terrain were slim… no, Fitz couldn’t leave her. But he could bring her with him.

 

He rushed over to his damaged flight simulator and turned on its interface, entering numbers through the cracked touchscreen. He detached the parachute, the oxygen and a whole host of the other unimportant functionalities before bringing just the thrusters and fuel lines over to where Skye lay prone. Her breathing was shallow enough that he gave her the oxygen he’d removed before connecting her arms and legs to the thrusters, angling them away from her. They couldn’t stay here – despite the dense foliage and trees around them it was not readily defensible with too many vantage points from too many places able to target them. They needed to go and if Skye couldn’t walk there on her own steam, she could do it with the flight suit – it didn’t have enough fuel left to enable her to actually fly, but it could make her practically weightless. Skye had her eyes closed and was mumbling incoherently by the time he finished adjusting the suit for her settings, Fitz guessed she must be suffering from more severe internal bleeding than he’d originally thought.

 

“I’ll take care of him,” she struggled out to nobody in particular, “I promise...”

 

“Skye?” Fitz crouched by her side and placed his good hand on her shoulder, flinching slightly as his dislocated fingers twitched at the contact. She blearily opened her eyes but couldn’t hold them open. Something was very, _very_ wrong. It wasn’t until he felt a slight dampness by his feet that he looked down and noticed a growing crimson-black patch spreading across the dirt stemming from the shrapnel wound in her side – the shrapnel was clearly not, as he had thought, plugging the injury and stopping the blood flow. At this rate, plummeting as she was in a rapid decline, she didn’t have long.

 

“Fitz?” She breathed meekly, her voice a weak imitation of its former strength; strength that she had had just moments before. Her skin was greying.

 

“Skye stay with me,” Fitz asked her, half commanding half begging.

 

“I’m… tired…” Fresh waves of lighter crimson rolled over her white shirt. It made Fitz feel sick.

 

“Stay awake Skye, you have to, erm, stay awake…” he trailed off before cursing at the fact he could barely put a single sentence together – if there was ever a time he needed to speak cogently and coherently it was now.

 

“Fitz…” She struggled out again, her body was trembling. He had never thought Skye, now one of the best field agents he’d ever met, could look so weak or so frail.

 

“Don’t try to talk Skye,” he ordered her, lifting up her white shirt and inspecting the slightly dislodged piece of tarnished metal sticking from her side.

 

“Fitz!” She cut across him in frustration, for a moment her eyes opened and bore a fiery spark of her normal self. Her face was still a wreck, covered in cuts and bruising just like his. Within seconds that spark was gone and she mumbled something so quietly he couldn’t make it out. He leant in closer until his face was right next to hers and, rather than speak, she arched her neck and planted a soft, blood-soaked kiss on his unsuspecting lips. A smile flickered across her face for a moment before she seemed to collapse inwards and fell unconscious.

 

“SKYE!” He yelled at her, whether for the kiss or fear of her dying he didn’t know and instinctively busied himself trying to stop the bleeding. He detached the thruster from her arm and pressed it against her stomach, facing sideways towards the shrapnel, before taking a deep breath and in one smooth movement twisting out the piece of metal and engaging the thruster, searing the wound closed.

 

She screamed… and then was silent.

 

By the time the first bullet ricocheted off of a nearby tree, Skye was still breathing – but faintly. Fitz knew their situation was poor: HYDRA was within striking distance and with Skye unconscious they were stuck. Added to that they only had twenty bullets and the targeting system for Fitz’s brace was misaligned (where the thrusters had warped the metal) they didn’t stand a chance. It had been Fitz’s hope that if he could wake Skye up then she could use the flight simulator and they could get to a better position but she showed no signs of immediate recovery and he didn’t have time to wait anymore. He picked up the thruster he’d used to burn her wound shut and pulled back the chrome plate cover to see the fuel canister inside – it had just over forty percent left. As a second and third shot rang out and hit alarmingly nearby he fired a warning shot on his pistol into the treeline at nobody in particular, just to alert the attackers that he was armed and prepared to fight. If nothing else, it bought him time.

 

The signal to activate each thruster could be delivered remotely from the computer on Fitz’s wrist – a manual override of sorts in case something went wrong mid-flight. He had just enough time to disconnect four of the five thrusters from the suit, open the casing and jam the sharp edge of the shrapnel he’d pulled out of Skye into the fuel cell before the battle began. The rocket fuel he used was particularly volatile – it had to be in order to conserve space in his design – and with the fuel tank of each thruster ruptured the ignition would burn _all_ of the fuel in one go. The ensuing explosion would not only project the casing of the thruster in all directions but also create a large enough fireball to make their position clear from the sky. Each one of the flight stabilisers that survived the impact with the ground became firstly what was essentially a highly unstable and very powerful grenade, but secondly they also served as flares to signal their location to Mack, Bobbi and Morse.

 

The few moments he bought himself were up and additional bullets bounced off nearby trees and shrubs. Although the HYDRA soldiers approached cautiously, they were approaching nonetheless and Fitz hadn’t had time to plant any of the newly weaponised thrusters. His best guestimate suggested he couldn’t throw them far enough for him to then escape the blast radius, thanks to his inclusion of arc reactor technology (courtesy of Stark Industries’ redacted files) even a tank with just five percent fuel would explode with almost three times the force of a normal grenade. He fired off two more warning shots into the treeline towards the HYDRA soldiers – he had no idea where they were or how many of them there were but his survival relied on buying time for them to be rescued, even if he just wanted to push on and find Jemma. Taking the last thruster from Skye’s suit, the unmodified one, he lashed it roughly to one of his _grenades_ and dug it into the ground at a 45 degree angle. If this didn’t buy them some time he didn’t know what else would. He activated the first thruster.

 

The canister shot forwards through the shrubbery and out of sight. It wasn’t until he heard a couple of gunshots crack that, after taking instinctive cover behind a tree, he activated the converted thruster in the hope it had landed somewhere near his adversaries. For the briefest moment nothing happened. Fitz gripped the pistol so hard that his knuckles shone white, terrified that his gambit had backfired and he and Skye were beyond saving. That was until everything around him lit a bright shade of blue. Indeed the resounding boom was so loud it blew out his left ear drum and threw him face first into the dirt, even from behind the tree stump. The volume of the explosion left him with a high pitch ringing noise punctuated only by the pounding of his heartbeat, his ear felt hot and swollen as warm liquid trickled past his lobe. When he shakily turned around to see the effect of his IED on the HYDRA assault teams he could hardly believe what he was seeing. The enormous blue pulse that followed the explosion ensured that any foliage and trees blocking his eyeline before had been completely levelled: great snaking tendrils of fire rose up high in front of him, belching dark plumes of smoke and burning embers like swarms of fireflies against a night sky. Amongst the carnage, terrified HYDRA operatives scurried backwards for cover, clearly unprepared for anything like that level of resistance. Guilt descended on Fitz as he saw the many trees he had uprooted and shattered, the debris of which was likely more dangerous than the metal casing itself.

 

Even with this success time was against him and Skye. HYDRA could regroup faster than he could and he immediately picked up another of the primed thrusters and ran in the direction of the explosion. Fitz had to position it at about the same distance to avoid him and Skye getting hurt which meant running directly towards what was left off the HYDRA forward assault teams. Although the soldiers were still in complete disarray when he got to a tree suitable to place the first makeshift explosive, by the time he made to retreat they started taking shots at him. He fired several bullets from his handgun and even came closer to hitting one of the enemy agents but it didn’t do him much good, he felt a stabbing pain in his thigh and hit the ground, landing on his arm with the dislocated fingers and cursing loudly. At first glance he counted seven HYDRA soldiers within his immediate line of sight and desperately tried to crawl to safety. The nearest opponent was barely a stone’s throw away and Fitz was still firmly within the blast radius of his IED, unable to give himself the cover he needed in order to drag himself back to Skye and patch his leg wound. As the nearest HYDRA agent came almost close enough for Fitz to see his own reflection in the man’s gas mask visor the young scientist instinctively raised his sidearm and squeezed the trigger three times, putting three bullets through his opponent’s chest. The soldier dropped almost on top of him, the sight of the thick, dark blood bubbling up from the otherwise lifeless corpse of his would-be killer made Fitz feel sick.

 

Leo Fitz was many things but he was not a murderer. He had killed before and he knew he would likely have to kill again (though of course he’d do almost anything to avoid it) but he had to believe there was a difference between having to kill someone to survive and murder. Soldiers and field agents kill in wars all the time, Fitz reasoned to himself, and this was a war, a global war. SHIELD and HYDRA were the opponents and he was on the front line. The other agents were closing the gap between him and them. Fitz didn’t have enough time or strength to either get back to Skye or get out the blast radius of his planted thruster. He knew what he had to do to protect Skye and with HYDRA only seconds away from surrounding him, killing him and then killing her he used the body of the man he had killed for what little cover it would give him and set off the positioned thruster, hoping the body would be at least a partial ballast and shield him from the blast that would surely kill him. To his great surprise he found himself _praying_ that it would take out enough of the HYDRA assault agents so as to prompt either a retreat or even a surrender and that even if he died, it would save Skye.

 

The wave of heat and force hit him hard, even with the HYDRA body in front of him he felt himself sliding into warm darkness in response to being thrown backwards. The morphine in his serum did little to block out the enormous rolling pain, reigniting the agony from the wounds he already had and adding fresh suffering as well. This second blast was so loud it made his tender head feel like it too was about to explode, as though someone had filled his skull with razor blades and then rattled it. He let out a strangled cry as he coughed on the dark smoke that engulfed him and tried to struggle to his feet, collapsing immediately as his leg gave out; the leg still oozing dark liquid from the bullet wound. His fingers scrambled through the upturned earth to find his pistol, having dropped it in the explosion, and when at last his hand brushed over it he clawed himself into a sitting position, using what was left of his brace to prop himself up. He remembered what Garrett had told him at the HUB; that if they caught him they wouldn’t kill him – they would make him comply, and Fitz didn’t want to comply. He would die before he let himself be captured.

 

The tragic truth of the situation struck him hard, his injuries were severe, Skye’s were worse. The likelihood of either of them surviving even if they weren’t surrounded in hostile territory by trained killers was slim. He had one last trick, one last chance that he could use to buy Skye some more time. It had taken him weeks to figure out how to power the brace in his suit, in the lab he had hooked it up to great batteries but when he came to design the thrusters for the flight simulator, the fuel cells in those turned out to be so efficient he ran the brace off of one. It was smaller by far than the type used in his suit but with more fuel left it would have a similar effect, only this time he wouldn’t be able to get away from the explosion. Using it would mean his death as well. As the ringing began to subside in one of his ears he made out muffled orders coming from somewhere in the dense smoke that surrounded him. He could make out soft balls of lights from torches in the darkness. From his half sitting position he couldn’t fire his pistol from his right hand, the dislocated fingers meant he couldn’t grip it properly, and his braced arm was holding him upright. He lie down against the cold mud, feeling some relief when he did, and took aim at the shadowed figures in the smoke.

 

He waited for what felt like a lifetime as droplets of sweat and blood and tears dripped from his face. His hand was steady in front of him, eyes lined clearly through the pistols iron sights. When at last his enemies revealed themselves he squeezed the trigger firing shot after shot at his adversaries and watching as one by one they fell down before him. With one final crack the slide of his gun cocked back fully and ejected its last, spent cartridge. He rolled onto his back and looked up above him, just making out the blue sky through the thick lingering smoke. If the BUS had been shot out of the air it was highly likely their other plane, with Mack and Tripp and Morse and Hunter, was down as well. Koenig was dead. Coulson and May were probably dead… and Jemma, _Jemma._ New tears streamed from his eyes. The empty gun in his hand slipped through his fingers and landed in the soft, tilled earth soundlessly. He shakily pressed the buttons on his brace to prepare it for self-destruction, having to use his middle finger because his index one was so disfigured. He closed his eyes, picturing the only face he wanted to see.

 

“I love you Jemma.”

 

His hand hovered over the final button, waiting for the new blurred shapes to get as close as possible before he pressed it. His qualms about killing dissipated as he pictured the cold, dead body of his one love and reminded himself that these were the monsters that did this… and he would take out as many of the bastards as he could before he died. The edges of his vision began to fade into darkness; one of them was getting close enough but even in his state he could see they weren’t wearing the standard HYDRA black. The blur knelt beside him and rather savagely yanked his hand away from his brace, squeezing it tightly in theirs.

 

And then he heard _her_.

 

“Oh, Leo.”

 

 

 

_Jemma Simmons_

 

The BUS shaking violently woke her up; the force of the sudden loss of altitude threw her into the ceiling of her and Fitz’s room. As everything started spinning she landed against one wall and then the other, hitting her head hard against the wooden bedside table. Orange light glowed through the port holes on the sidewall as the room warped around her; the steel bending and then snapping into different pieces. Her world literally fell out from under her as the room was ripped apart. She screamed for Fitz but against the whirring sounds of the engines and the roaring of the wind in her ears even she didn’t hear her own voice as he tumultuously plummeted towards the earth far below her. The cold air rippled through her clothes and nestled deep in her breast, she should have been terrified but curiously, she was not. In fact she felt oddly calm as the shock kicked in, even as she fell with the remnants of the BUS. While her gut and teeth clenched in reaction to the sudden freefall – in fact her entire muscular system had, predictably, seized up – she closed her eyes and enjoyed the spinning. It reminded her of her flight with Fitz, not the fall, but rather when they had tested out his flying apparatus.

 

That flight had been the most incredible experience of Simmons’ life. True, she had almost never been as terrified as the moment when the ground disappeared from underneath them and they free fell for an impossibly long thirty seconds, but even then she simply gripped Fitz’s hand tightly and focussed on him. Once the thrusters kicked in she realised she could control her movements in the air in much the same way one might control them while under water; simple adjustments to position and posture changed both her speed and direction with surprising ease, like swimming. She had never felt freer: they spiralled and soared, they twisted and tilted, they fell and they flew like they were born to do so. Being in the sky with him was like diving into a limitless, timeless ocean of loving warmth. She didn’t think she could remember Fitz ever looking as happy as he did, bathed in the orange light of the setting sun and grinning as he made motions so intricate it was clear he had tested the suit out before. Truthfully, they both glided with such grace and precision an observer would think they’d been doing it their whole lives.

 

Only, it wasn’t warm now. And Fitz wasn’t there with her. She forced her eyes open and spread her arms into a star shape, trying desperately to create a larger surface area. This time she knew she had very little chance of survival without intervention. Far below she spied out the shining red of Lola, Coulson’s flying car, remembering that he and Skye had once survived falling out of the BUS in it as she did. But it was too far, and there was no guarantee she could get it working even if she caught up – Coulson kept it under quite literal lock and key, mainly to stop Mack trying to drive it. Her heart skipped a beat when she noticed one of Fitz’s flight simulators in use in the distance but even far away she could tell something was wrong with it; it wasn’t working properly and its user was dropping far too fast for her to ever get to them. Nonetheless she found herself wishing it was Fitz; that he’d survive this awful ordeal, even if she didn’t – but she hadn’t told him. The thought of him living his life without her made her feel an overwhelming sense of pity for him; her death would be instantaneous, he would spend a whole life _incomplete._ Tears burnt in her eyes, made cold from the wind.

 

Scanning the rest of the wreckage through her windswept hair she resigned herself to her fate, closing her eyes and trying not to imagine the moment of impact. She wanted to focus on her second flight with Fitz, where they danced together in the sky, but her mind kept coming back to their first fall instead – when she nearly lost him. Then, as now, the thought made her sick. She attempted to hold on to that joy when he had given her the antiserum and held her so close to him that she thought he might break her ribs if he squeezed any tighter but her mind wandered to the cargo ramp where Skye tried desperately to resuscitate him, to Fitz’s panic stricken expression when he woke up and couldn’t breathe, drowning in front of them, to his relief when he spat out the water and looked to her – concern and love shining from him. After their second flight she told Skye what he had asked her to do, to jump off the plane in the flight simulator, and was shocked by the knowledge that everybody else already knew, they had known for weeks. While writing the software Skye and Fitz had already done several test flights together outside the Playground to make sure it all worked.

 

“You really think Coulson would let him risk his life like that?” Skye had said, before adding with an almost unnoticeable touch of sadness, “You really think he would have risked yours? He loves you Jemma, more than I’ve ever seen anyone love anyone.”

 

“You will look after him won’t you?” Jemma had asked, “If anything ever happens to me.”

 

“I’ll take care of him, I promise.” Skye vowed.

 

She was jolted from her memories by a pair of hands roughly grabbing her from behind accompanied by the familiar hard voice of May shouting something in her ear, the words lost against the great noise of the air. Jemma tried to turn to face her but doing so only made the two of them spin and pick up speed which in turn prompted May’s grip to loosen so much that she almost let her go. Finally stabilised in the air Jemma took stock of her surroundings, from her peripheral vision she watched Coulson, parachute on his back, diving down towards the ground at great speed but lost sight of him after she and May span slightly too far left. She saw the burning wreckage of the BUS strewn across the land below them, an enormous explosion erupted from one of the wings as it hit the earth alarmingly close to where they would likely land. As the dense forest approached rapidly on them Jemma felt a clip being fastened around her waist before she was jerked upwards as May’s parachute opened. Below them, Coulson’s parachute also opened and they gently glided towards solid earth, watching as the tall trees came closer and closer. May expertly steered them away from the large fire of the BUS’ fuselage.

 

The leaves and branches pressed across her their faces, leaving a couple of small scratches as they dropped through the treetop canopy. Getting down from the parachute proved problematic though as the got tangled in the uppermost branches and left both Jemma and May hanging quite some way above the ground. If the circumstances weren’t so desperate the thought had made her laugh that, after surviving the BUS being blown out of the air and getting safely to the earth, the short distance from where they were hanging to the mud below could still be fatal. With some grace May cut one of the most knotted ropes with her knife which dropped them some ten feet towards some branches that would be thick enough to carry their weight. By the time the two of them shakily shimmied their way along the tree and climbed down they were joined by Coulson and Koenig, the latter of whom seemed very pale. Simmons assumed Coulson had dived for him the same way May had dived for her.

 

“Fitz?” Jemma asked, the obvious emotion in her voice betraying her desperate desire for him to be alive.

 

“He was trying to put on one of his suits when the plane broke apart, with Skye,” Koenig said quietly, evidently in shock from what had just happened. She had been told that he very rarely was allowed to spend time in the field – he was too important to the running of the Playground and her sister stations. Her gut tensed at the memory of the faulty flight simulator spiralling into the distance, she doubted anyone would have survived that landing.

 

“How did they find us?” May asked, checking her pistol and switching off its safety.

 

“I don’t know.” Coulson replied, a dark patch of blood above his eye making him look weak for the first time. His expression was a mixture of concern and incredulity both at having survived the landing and having been shot out of the sky in the first place.

 

“Where are the others?” Jemma asked, holding her hands together to stop them shaking.

 

“I don’t know.” Coulson repeated, looking towards his feet in a resigned fashion that she had never seen from him before.

 

“We have to find Fitz and Skye.” Jemma said, turning to each person in the group one by one: first Coulson, then Koenig (who wouldn’t meet her gaze) and then May.

 

“And we will.” May answered putting a hand on Simmons’ shoulder before turning to Coulson. “Koenig,” she said so authoritatively it shook him out of whatever he was thinking, “Radio the jet – tell them we’re fine.”

 

Koenig nodded but before he had time to even unclip his radio a great wind blew down from above them, rustling through the tree leaves.

 

“Looks like they’ve found us,” Coulson said decisively, reassuming his mantle as team leader. Somehow the blood above his eye now served to make him look more serious, rather than weak, Simmons noted with some curiosity.

 

“Need a ride?” Tripp quipped over the radio at the same time as a rope came tumbling down through the tree canopy, complete with a harness to winch each person up to the jet – after all, the plane couldn’t land there.

 

Koenig went up first, then Simmons, May and Coulson in that order. Bobbi pulled her to her feet when she reached the top of the pulley and before she could catch her breath Mack descended on her, gripping her arm.

 

“Fitz with you?” He blurted out and stepped back dismayed when she shook her head.

 

“Have you heard anything, on the radio?” She asked nervously, not sure if she wanted to hear his answer. He placed his hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

 

“Nothing yet.”

 

“How did they find us?” May asked again as she climbed aboard the jet.

 

“We’re still checking,” Hunter answered, apologetic for not being able to give her a better response.

 

“Have you heard from the others: Skye, Fitz?” May asked, running a hand through her hair before turning and helping Coulson onto the cargo ramp of the much smaller jet.

 

“Quiet so far,” Hunter said; the lack of hope obvious in his voice, “and HYDRA ground crews are scouring the crash sights.”

 

Coulson nodded in understanding before handing out marching orders to the various members of the team. It was only when he said “Jemma,” loudly that she noticed she hadn’t been listening, and had instead been looking through one of the jets windows at the forest, wishing she could see where Fitz had landed, hoping beyond hope he would be alright.

 

“Sorry I–” she started but was cut off.

 

“If he’s out there to find, we will find him.” Coulson told her quietly, trying to give her hope. She felt her lip begin to quiver and tears escape her eyes.

 

“He could be hurt, and alone.” She found herself saying. “If he isn’t–”

 

She was interrupted by an enormous bang coming from the forest below.

 

“Tripp, talk to me what was that?” Coulson called anxiously through the cockpit door.

 

“Whatever it was it wasn’t us,” he snapped back, turning the plane slightly.

 

“Are we taking fire?” Hunter asked, gripping the side of the jet as though it were about to split apart.

 

“I don’t think so.” Morse answered; her hand ghosting over his.

 

“There!” Mack pointed out of one of the porthole windows to a large plume of smoke, “Right there!” As Simmons reached the glass a second, enormous explosion erupted with a bright blue flash.

 

“Fitz!” She exclaimed and, without thinking, took an assault rifle from the rack of weapons and ran to the rope, slipping harness around her and looping the rope through it. She didn’t know how but she just _knew_ it was him. “Get me close!” She called out and, to her surprise, Tripp did. He flew so close the smoke from the fire flooded the hold.

 

“Simmons!” Coulson yelled. She was expecting him to stop her but instead he put his own harness on and pushed a pair of heat vision goggles in her hand to help with the low visibility. Admittedly, they were more hassle than they were worth as the smoke was hot enough to completely block out any other signatures.

 

The drop was short and sharp, her knees buckled when she hit the ground and she tripped forwards. In the moments before Coulson, May, Hunter and Morse also landed she looked around at the carnage, gripping her gun tightly. She could hear gunshots nearby but both with the goggles and her naked eye couldn’t make out a thing. When the others had safely landed they pushed forwards in the direction of the shots. Only, they went silent. The wind from the jet engines hovering over them started to clear some of the smoke and the true scale of the chaos became clear – all around them the half-melted forms of HYDRA soldiers lie prone, some of them still eerily twitching, perpetually reliving their death throes. She screamed out Fitz’s name but heard no response, she pushed forward until she could see the shape of a man in the smoke but it was not Fitz. She didn’t even realise she’d done it until the man dropped into a crumpled heap on the floor, but she had squeezed the trigger on her rifle.

 

“Over here!” Coulson called from somewhere behind her, and when she turned she saw him pointing out a twisted figure lying in screwed up against the floor.

 

She had never run so fast in her life.

 

“I love you Jemma.” The figure mumbled through cut lips, his fingers ready to press the button that would end it forever.

 

She closed the gap between him and her in seconds, realising what he was about to do and immediately grabbed his hand to stop it. He recoiled in pain and as she looked down at him, at the man she loved, she said in a mixture of wonder and pity and fear, “Oh, Leo.”

 

“Bloody hell,” Hunter muttered as he and the others gathered round Fitz and Jemma. While Coulson shot him a stern glance even he could see why Hunter said that: Fitz looked a horror. Deep burns, cuts and bruises covered his body, coated in encrusted blood and dirt. His hair and clothes were blackened and a bullet wound to his leg bled freely. It made Simmons want to throw up.

 

“Skye…” Fitz mumbled and twisted his head towards her direction.

 

Coulson nodded and ran with May to go to her while Hunter and Morse took crouching positions around Fitz and Simmons in case HYDRA regrouped.

 

“I didn’t think… I would see you again.” Fitz struggled out, his throat dry and body trembling under the exertion of speaking. His face broke into a slow smile, reopening many of the cuts around his mouth, “I’m glad I did…”

 

“Shhh…” Jemma said, running her hand through his blackened hair, her voice cracked with emotion “You’re going to be fine, you’ll see.”

 

“Jem…” he breathed, barely able to speak, before his eyes flicked shut and he felt limp in her arms

 

“Fitz?” She said, her voice small as she rocked him slightly in the hope his eyes would reopen. “Leo!” She half screamed as her tears dropped onto his emotionless face.

 

He didn’t know, she hadn’t told him.

 

The words flowed softly out of her mouth.

 

“Leo you can’t die, I can’t do this without you, I don’t want to… I love you Leo, I’ve always loved you… you have to live because, because you’re going to be a father.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There we go, the penultimate chapter of this work - much longer than I thought given this was only supposed to be a one-shot! I also hope you enjoyed the extra length. I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas - I certainly did, and I apologise for leaving it on such a cliched cliff-hangar. (And yes this means Fitz/Simmons have had sex more than once between chapters 4 and 5 and yes you will get to read their first time in the next chapter - I'm not so mean as to skip it lol! So smut warning for next week.) As always thanks for the kudos, I'd love to hear thoughts on the work and see you for the last chapter within the next two weeks :)


	6. Flashback

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So not the final chapter I'm afraid otherwise it would be far too long, instead enjoy this one-shot flashback from FitzSimmons' times at Sci-Tech, set about a year after the first Flashback but I'm not that mean as to not give any more detail on the aftermath of the BUS explosion, so at the end is a brief insight into the followup from Coulson's POV (which is a first in this story.) Quite a different chapter to usual but nonetheless, I hope you enjoy it.

_SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, September 10 th 2005._

 

Simmons could hardly believe it had been over a year since she’d joined the Academy; Sci-Tech felt as much a part of her now as London ever did. Her eyes glanced across to Fitz who was sitting uncomfortably, nursing a bottle of cider in one hand while making idle chat with one of their other classmates. They were in one of the would-be quieter common rooms that branched off from the main hub of the Boiler Room; it would be quitter had they not spent the last couple of hours getting steadily tipsier and rowdier to celebrate Fitz completing his first private assignment. They weren’t allowed to know what it was but whatever he’d invented had clearly made him popular with the higher ups who had given him a very generous new bursary and a private, significantly larger, lab space – as well as a couple of weeks of vacation. Fitz ought to have been delighted and yet, for some reason, he was not. Other people hadn’t noticed – after all he was smiling, cracking jokes and generally being affable but she knew him well enough to see straight through his charade, he wasn’t happy. Surrounded as they were by a couple of dozen friends and acquaintances she couldn’t ask him what was wrong and found herself wishing the evening would end early. She was shaken out of thoughts by the drunken antics of some of their less restrained peers.

 

“Never have I ever…” One of their classmates called out, slurring slightly and gripping a bottle of Jack Daniels whiskey, “had sex in the lab.” There was a mixed chorus of grumbles and excited murmurs as he then took a drink. Two other guys drank as well as one of the girls, Anne, who blushed slightly as the group erupted in drunken laughter at the admissions.

 

“John you little liar you have not–” One of the girls Simmons didn’t know shouted out. The girl was probably one of Fitz’s friends and it made her a little annoyed she didn’t know her name. She knew she really ought to have made more of an effort to learn the names of his other friends, he knew all of hers – though admittedly, there were less of them to know and he had always been better at those kinds of details than she had. It was too late to ask them now, she sighed, vowing to make Fitz tell her who everybody was later.

 

“I totally have… with Sarah…” The guy who started the game, now identified as John, said loudly and got a thump on his shoulder from the girl sat next to him who Simmons, therefore, assumed must be Sarah.

 

“Never have I ever filled out a lab report drunk,” Anne said in a desperate bid to defuse the tension. It was a smart one to say as almost everybody had to take a drink except, Simmons noted, herself and Fitz. The latter of whom had stood up and was making his way towards the door.

 

“Never have I ever had a one night stand.” An obviously hammered guy sitting beside Sarah said. Like some of the others in the group he drank, downing his pint before announcing with a slight burp, “It’s a long list!” A couple of people smirked but since he hadn’t been invited amongst them and was there through mutual friends it felt awkward.

 

As he opened another can of beer John muttered to him cautiously, “I think you’ve had enough James.”

 

James ignored him and leered forward, gripping Sarah’s thigh possessively, “What do you say darling?” He drawled, the smell of alcohol heavy from him, “Want to make that list longer? And something else?”

 

John stood up and rounded on James. If they weren’t careful it could have escalated into a full blown fight but Sarah calmly removed James’ hand and said, “I don’t think you could satisfy a gal like me champ.” The ensuing laughter diffused the tension in the room and, after a couple of moments John sat back down. James held up his hands as though surrendering and lent backwards into the armchair he was sat on.

 

“Never have I ever tried to slip away from my own party,” someone to Simmons’ left said and all eyes fell on Fitz whose face flushed with embarrassment. He had got halfway to the door during the commotion between James and Sarah.

 

“I was just going to get another drink.” Fitz mumbled and gestured to his admittedly mostly empty cider.

 

“No need for that.” John passed him an unopened bottle of Scottish Whiskey, while Jon could be an arse when drunk, he was quite thoughtful sober and had been meaning to give the bottle as a congratulations to Fitz. “Well done Leo, on whatever it is you did.”

 

Fitz graciously accepted the drink and unscrewed the lid and poured himself a glass. “Thank you John.”

 

“I know it’s not my go but never have I ever been to Scotland.” John said with a grin and winked at Fitz. Fitz took a sip and coughed slightly, it was evidently stronger than he’d expected – something that John took enormous delight in.

 

“Never have I ever… discovered an element.” One of Fitz’s engineer friends said. All heads turned to Fitz, including Jemma’s, as he raised his glass towards his lips.

 

Fitz broke into a broad grin and laughed, lowering his glass without drinking from it, “I didn’t discover a new element guys.” He seemed very at ease around these people Jemma noted.

 

“Never have I ever created a robot.” Somebody suggested to the great dismay of the entire group. Who after all hadn’t built one of those?

 

The evening continued in this manner for quite some time, after a couple more guesses at Fitz’s private assignment they settled for more generic ones and pretty soon, having run out of those, they started saying ones with engaging stories behind them. Several hours must have passed this way, with Fitz’s whisky now a third empty and him looking decidedly drunk, when the game began again. After a few simple place ones like South America, Europe, Asia and others one of Simmon’s friends, Jess, spoke up.

 

“Never have I ever been to England,” She offered in an attempt to help Simmons catch up with the others. Jess was there as a courtesy to her by Fitz, he knew they didn’t know many of the same people so wanted her to bring someone she definitely got on with. Truthfully, although Simmons would always appreciate Fitz being her first friend at Sci-Tech she didn’t see that much of him on a day to day basis: the engineering and biochemistry students spent most of the days in different Faculties, only sharing some lectures. Noticing they had turned to look at her she sipped from her drink.

 

“Two fingers, you’re supposed to take two fingers!” James called out from his armchair after a surprisingly long period of silence. While it was true Jemma didn’t drink the normal amount they were only playing the game for fun and many others had drunk less than that in the evening in order to make the alcohol last longer. Wanting to avoid making another scene during Fitz’s celebration she made an overly theatrical gesture of putting her two fingers below the surface of the alcohol and drinking a little more.

 

“Happy?” She quipped sarcastically, making it clear she didn’t particular care what he thought.

 

“No, I’m not,” James leered as his mouth twisted up into a malicious grin. “I think you could fit in more than two fingers.”

 

Fitz stood up in protest, immediately followed by John – though whether John stood up to protest with Fitz or simply prop him up Simmons didn’t know because Fitz was leaning on him so much. She had never seen Fitz drunk before and, given how shaky he was, she suspect it was his first time drinking so much.

 

“Piss off James.” Fitz spat out at him as though he were expelling poison, the alcohol knocked him into a much heavier Scottish accent – more like the one he had when they first met, the one that he’d spent almost a year distancing himself from. To Jemma’s surprise Fitz looked genuinely furious, it was likely just the alcohol affecting him but he really did look ready to lash out at James – she was no longer sure if John was holding Fitz up or holding him back, probably a mixture of the two.

 

James rose to his feet and held his hands up in the same sorry-not-sorry gesture he had done earlier, “It’s just a joke Fitz.” He offered a normal smile and for a moment tensions ebbed. As Fitz reluctantly turned to sit back down, largely spurred on by John trying to avoid a fight, James added, “Besides who am I kidding, she’s so uptight you’d hardly get one fing–”

 

Fitz punched him, hard.

 

Everything afterwards happened ridiculously fast and it was only when Jemma stood up that she noticed how drunk she was as well – she had gotten through almost a bottle of wine on her own and had never been what people would call a heavyweight. James rugby tackled Fitz into the ground and began a fray of limbs as people around them, equally drunk, tried to separate and untangle the two of them from each other. Despite scoring the first blow Fitz struck the back of his head against the floor when he hit the ground and lost the capability to do anything but lash out wildly and blindly. James quickly got the better of him, though not before he sustained a couple of rather painful kicks from Fitz. James retaliated with a couple of wild punches and, despite Fitz’s best efforts, probably would have won had John not eventually succeeded in pulling the fight apart.

 

John turned to James, anger flashing in his eyes, “I swear to God James if you don’t go, NOW, I’ll…” He screwed his fist into a ball and held it up as a warning, seemingly too angry and drunk to finish his own threat.

 

James wrenched himself free of the grasps of those around him and stormed to the door yelling as series of curses as he left. His cheek had already shown signs of severe bruising and blood dripped from behind split lips. The moment James had left the room John visibly relaxed and leant against the back of an armchair to hold his body up. But if James had looked bad, Fitz was worse. Simmons didn’t know when she did it but at some point she made her way over to him and knelt down at his side, handing him some tissues to clean up the blood. Her gut twisted uncomfortably.

 

“I take it I lost,” Fitz joked with a pained laugh from the floor, accepting the tissues from her to wipe some of the blood away and struggling into a sitting position.

 

“Your first punch was good,” John told him truthfully from over Simmons’ shoulder before they both helped him stand, “But after that well I’m afraid it all kind of, fell apart.” They both laughed, allowing Jemma to catch a glimpse of Fitz’s now red teeth. She felt instinctively guilty, figuring that if she hadn’t been there then Fitz’s party would still be alright. John turned to her, “Can you get him to his room?” He asked and, when she nodded, added “Oh, and give him some ice… for his head… I’m going to go find that bastard James.”

 

It took a lot longer than she expected to get from the Boiler Room to Fitz’s dorm, not only because Fitz could hardly stand from either the alcohol or the concussion but also because she was only barely able to hold her balance herself. It certainly was not their proudest moment, the two geniuses from Great Britain stumbling round the different corridors at the dead of night. At one point they had to turn back when they realised they’d got off on the wrong floor entirely. When at last she propped him against the wall outside his door she asked him for his keys but, with one hand steadying himself and the other pushing a block of ice to his head (they’d got it from behind the Boiler Room bar instead of First Aid, otherwise they’d have to file an incident report), when he tried to take them out he almost fell over. In the end Jemma had to fish them out from his pocket, only realising afterwards how close she had been to touching him _there._

“I’m sorry Leo.” She said as she fumbled with his keys, not able to line them up with the lock even using both her hands.

 

“Don’t be.” He replied softly, adjusting the ice on his head and wincing slightly.

 

“If I didn’t come you could still be down there.” She told him, finally unlocking the door and helping him towards his bed.

 

“Then thank Christ you did,” he joked, offering an endearing smile, “Besides,” He groaned as she helped him sit on the bed, “You were the only one I really wanted there…” A look of panic crossed his face and he quickly added, “Well maybe John too.”

 

She smiled at him, drunk and beaten up as he was, and made them both a glass of water from the tap in his en-suite. After they drank it, Fitz spilling some of his down his chin in the process, she pulled his shoes off and helped him under the covers.

 

“Not exactly a heroic sight!” He laughed as she pulled the covers over his shoulders. “I won’t exactly be a field agent if I have to be tucked in after a fight against James fucking Benson!”

 

She smirked – Fitz must be drunk in order to swear, or admit that he still wanted to be a field agent. She found it kind of sweet; he was normally so introverted that it made a pleasant change to see the much stronger side to him. “What’s more heroic, to win a fight you know you can win or to fight and lose but know you did what’s right?”

 

“Ask me again when I don’t have a headache,” Fitz groaned and pulled adjusted the ice block then, deciding he’d come up with something funnier, he added, “Are there any heroic scenarios that don’t involve losing?”

 

She let out a chuckle of laughter and instinctively wet one of her fingers with her tongue, using it to wipe away a bit of blood she’d missed earlier. Fitz pulled a face as if to say he was disgusted. She shot him a fake look of irritation but neither could hold the dead pan act for long and within moments they were both smiling again.

 

“What time is it?” He asked her blearily, the weight of the alcohol and pain hitting him.

 

She realised she genuinely had no idea and checked her phone, a brand new Nokia 3410 her parents had sent from England for completing he first year, “It’s just gone half two.”

 

“Already? Well, Happy Birthday then Jem.” Fitz said with a sigh as he tried to make himself more comfortable in his bed, missing his softer mattress in Scotland.

 

“It’s not my birthday until tom- oh, I guess it is then.” Simmons said, surprised that Fitz had remembered before she did. There was an amiable pause between them as Simmons checked the bruises on his cheek and back of his head to make sure he hadn’t broken anything in the fight. They were very close together.

 

“Will you stay?” Her heart skipped a beat, unsure of what exactly he was asking and yet, for some reason, before she had time to even think it though she answered.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Thanks Jem.”

 

Jemma turned off the light and lay down next to him; they both stared at the ceiling. Heat radiated from Fitz and he smelt quite strongly of the whiskey he’d been drinking all night. She was beginning to get nervous and desperately wanted to break the tension between them so simply said the first thing that came to her mind.

 

“The Tenth Doctor’s Scottish, you know. I still can’t believe Christopher Eccleston only stayed for one series though. We finally get the show back and he bows out after just 13 episodes.” Impossibly the tension between them rose slightly as Fitz didn’t say anything for almost a minute. When he did speak his words were quite quiet and nervous.

 

“Simmons?” He asked.

 

“Yes.” She replied anxiously, unsure of where this was going.

 

“I’m going back to Scotland tomorrow, for the vacation they gave me.”

 

“That’ll be nice.” She said still uncertain of what he was asking. “When’s your flight?”

 

“Not til the evening… would you like to come with me?” He asked, noticeably tensing as he asked as though preparing himself for her to make fun of him.

 

“I’d love to,” She said honestly, after all he had said that one day he would bring her to Scotland almost a year ago, “But I can’t.”

 

“Other plans?” He asked, trying to hide his obvious disappointment.

 

“Work.” She said, realising she had started smiling and enjoying the fact that the tension had been broken. She nudged him in the shoulder and laughed, adding, “We don’t all get to take holiday you know. I’ll be cooped up in my cramped lab space while you get to return home.”

 

He laughed and then paused, looking over to her. She couldn’t see that’s what he’d done, it was too dark, but she knew he had. “Jemma?” He asked, and all of the tension that had just been relieved flooded straight back between them again. Her heart pounded in her chest.

 

“Yes.”

 

“What if you didn’t have to work in your lab?”

 

The penny dropped.

 

“Fitz?” She said, unsure if she was asking him a question or just saying it because she didn’t know what else to say.

 

“The new lab; the one for completing the assignment, it’s huge, Jem. They asked me if I wanted anyone to move into it with me and, well, I was hoping that maybe you might want to do that?” He trailed off, nerves evident in his voice.

 

“You want us to work together?” She asked incredulously, she knew that he would be able to request another lab partner but assumed he’d pick an engineer. Even though they didn’t spend a great deal of time around each other, when they did they just seemed to fit together.

 

“Only if you want to,” He mumbled in a way that made it sound like he’d just offered up his head into a guillotine and was waiting to see if she’d drop the rope.

 

“What about what I’m working on? I can’t just drop it.” She said, thinking pragmatically. She realised by inference she’d already said yes and was just trying to work out how to transition.

 

“They’ll move it over to the new lab, write a list of all the equipment you need and they’ll give it to us.” He told her, relieved that she hadn’t immediately dismissed the idea.

 

“Any equipment at all? How much money have they given you?” She asked, her mind racing with ideas of how she could further her research with some of the newer machines they don’t let anyone under fifth year use.

 

“A lot.” He said with a slight chuckle.

 

“What did you do for them?” She asked, even though she knew he wouldn’t say.

 

“If you work with me, I can show you.” He teased, knowing he’d caught her interest.

 

“If I said yes, what happens next?” She asked, turning to look at him. She could just about make out his eyes glinting.

 

“It’ll take them another couple of weeks for the lab to be ready so until it’s done you’d be on vacation like me.” His voice was full of hope.

 

She was silent for a while, lost in thought. Leo Fitz was the most welcoming, wonderful and all round comforting person she’d ever met, they’d worked together in the past though only on small projects and they had a chemistry she’d never felt with anyone else. He was by far the smartest person in Sci-Tech and even though he could have chosen anybody, including older students, he chose her. Something about him was just so _right_ – his tufts of brown hair, soft Scottish accent, eyes full of promise and heart full of kindness. There really was only one answer.

 

“Ok.” She finally said, quietly.

 

“Ok?” Fitz asked, wanting to make sure he’d heard her right.

 

“Of course I will Fitz.”

 

He beamed, not that she could see of course.

 

“What time was your flight again?” Jemma asked him, looking for a more specific answer.

 

“About half past ten, in the evening.” He said, hoping it meant what he thought it did.

 

“Give me the day to gather up my things from the Biochem Faculty and write that list of equipment and I’d love to come to Scotland with you.”

 

“We should come up with a name for the Lab.” Fitz only half joked, his excitement evident to Simmons. She wondered just how long he’d been working up the courage to ask her.

 

“What kind of name?” She smiled, humouring him.

 

“Something personal like… JeLe, from Jemma and Leo – you know, like Jelly.” He said childishly, evidently still quite tipsy, even if he had sobered up a bit.

 

“Oh yes,” Simmons mocked, “Welcome to the Jelly Lab, we’re scientists Leo, we work at SHIELD not Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”

 

“Well what do you think we should call it?” Fitz asked, ever so slightly petulantly.

 

She paused for a moment, and thought hard. “What about just Fitzsimmons’ Lab?”

 

“Fitzsimmons, eh?” Leo said with a yawn, evidently considering it as he closed his eyes, “it’s very formal though.”

 

“It’s professional,” Simmons answered.

 

“Is that what we are? _Professional_?” Fitz asked as sleep began to overtake him. In the years to come, though, he would claim to not remember asking that question.

 

“Some of the time.” She answered quietly with a mischievous grin known only to herself. Fitz had already started snoring by the time she finished; it didn’t long for her to join him in sleep.

 

 

_36 Hours after the BUS explosion…_

Coulson was alone, sat in an empty hospital waiting room; his hands trembled around a cup of coffee that had long since got cold. He didn’t even remember if he had got it for himself or it had been given to him, his mind was locked in thought. After the BUS was shot out of the air they had little choice but to call for help – even if they’d gotten Fitz and Skye back to the Playground they didn’t have enough medical staff to treat both of them at the same time. It had meant making an impossible choice. He’d been forced to request assistance from Colonel Talbot who agreed, somewhat reluctantly, to take either Skye or Fitz and treat their wounds on the condition that he be brought up to speed on why they were headed to Puerto Rico in the first place. Coulson had no way of knowing who to hand over to Talbot and absolutely no idea how to explain that a sprawling, potentially dangerous-in-an-end-of-the-world-kind-of-way, alien city was buried under the island. New York meant that aliens weren’t exactly a secret, but it was one thing to be attacked in the present and quite another to admit that humanity’s history was predated and interfered with by them – even with Thor and Loki’s existence now widely known.

 

He turned his choice over in his mind still unable to think through a better alternative. He couldn’t afford to lose Fitz or Skye: even in Fitz’s condition he had demonstrated intellect, bravery and survival instinct in Haiti that had astounded Coulson, not only was he an extremely valuable asset, the team would cease to function without him. Coulson wasn’t oblivious to the relationship between FitzSimmons and between Fitz and Mack, and Fitz and Skye. Even Koenig spoke fondly of Fitz, and Koenig seldom spoke fondly of anyone. And then there was Skye, under May’s guidance she was not simply just an irreplaceable SHIELD agent but as an 084 it was essential Talbot not get his hands on her. Additionally, while he didn’t want to admit it, in the months since he met Skye he had started to see himself as a father figure to her – a rather complicated feeling to have given how dangerous her actual father was. But still, had he made the right call? To give Fitz to Talbot, it made him sick to think about it. There was a time when SHIELD was well funded enough that he could’ve treated a hundred wounded men at the Playground or any number of bases but that time had long since passed. They were understaffed, underfunded and it was either give Fitz up and trust Talbot, or watch him die. The sad truth was, he may have to watch Fitz die either way, his wounds were severe and Skye, who regained consciousness briefly on the flight back, warned that he’d used his serum again to try and save them both.

 

Worse yet, giving Fitz up meant losing Simmons as well; she refused to leave his side for as long as possible, she had to be held back by Morse while Fitz was lifted onto the air ambulance and refused to sleep until they were reunited. So here Coulson was, sitting in some hospital waiting room while HYDRA had a weapon of untold power and half his team was incapacitated. Nothing had changed about their mission objective – the city was still there and whatever HYDRA was planning to do with it and the obelisk had to be stopped. He felt guilty admitting it, but he had hoped Simmons, knowing she couldn’t help Fitz just by being at the hospital, would take her minds of things by throwing herself into work but she didn’t. Instead she paced, sat, cried and poured over Fitz’s charts whenever she could get the chance. Coulson had never seen her like this, not even when Fitz collapsed at the Playground did Simmons react like this. True then, as now, she barely left him but even there she took breaks to shower, eat and sleep, things she hadn’t done since they arrived the day before. Coulson sighed, two floors down they were preparing a room for him and Talbot to speak in – Coulson had refused to leave Simmons alone in the building so would hold their conversation about the alien city there. After that Mack would relieve him so he could take command at the Playground again and formulate their next move against HYDRA, with what little force they could muster.

 

One saving grace, at least, was Fitz’s boldness in Haiti. HYDRA had expected the SHIELD team to be easy to take out, they certainly hadn’t expected to encounter anything like the resistance Fitz showed and the death toll from his two IEDs and his shooting had been catastrophic to them. From just the initial sweep of the area Talbot revealed they found some thirty four bodies – even to an organisation as vast and well-funded as HYDRA, after losing the battle at the Triskellion and the battle for the HUB, they couldn’t take such losses lightly. In a surprising act of caution Whitehall had recalled his men to regroup, unprepared to fight a guerrilla war against such seemingly well-equipped SHIELD agents at that cost. What was actually a devastating HYDRA victory appeared to all but Coulson and his team as at the very least a stalemate if not an outcome to SHIELD’s advantage. After their first debriefing Talbot originally commended Coulson, even if it came in a _do you have any idea the diplomatic mess you’ve caused sort of way…_ Nonetheless, Coulson found himself grateful he’d worked out an arrangement with Talbot, he’d turned out to be an extremely valuable ally on more than one occasion now. And with him on board they were better prepared to fight HYDRA than they ever had been before; whatever else his shortcomings the man had jets, money, influence and men at a time when they had almost none of that. It made him sick to admit it, but they really needed Talbot.

 

A chill ran through him, as cold as his cup of coffee, and Coulson realised he couldn’t shake the horrendous thought that, no matter what comes next, _a whole lot more people are going to die._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Smut warning for next week (definitely this time) as well as what will almost certainly be the closing chapter of the fic (but then I've said that before!) Hope you enjoyed this Flashback of their getting their first lab. It's not exactly canonical (though I saw the deleted scenes from Season 1 after writing the first Flashback) so I wrote it based on my experiences with someone at University, though the real life story wasn't nearly as dramatic :P I hope you're all having a good start to 2014 and I apologise for holding you on a cliffhanger (again!)


	7. Location Unknown

_SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, October 2005._

Although it rained on all but three of the days they spent there Simmons loved Scotland, she enjoyed the feel of the cold British air on her face after so many months in US heat. The green fields and furrows reminded her of Devon and the Isle of Wight (where she lived before London) except somehow Scotland was… _wilder…_ She met Fitz’s mum who was a truly charming lady that probably smothered Fitz a little too much, though not so much as to make him entirely dependent, though she did find out his mother still chose his clothes for him. Fitz’s mother was a jolly lady; her hair was a patchwork of different browns and greys and her hazel eyes resonated warmth, just like Fitz’s. She seemed most at ease when doing things for other people, so much so it was hard to imagine her doing anything else. That being said; Fitz’s mother was clearly so desperate to see _her little Leo_ with a girlfriend that she kept dropping often embarrassing hints to them both, telling them not-so-subtly they should become a couple. Somehow though, her efforts simply came across as endearing rather than anything else. She really was a lovely woman and Simmons felt remarkably privileged to be welcomed into Fitz’s home, the home she had heard so much about in the last year.

 

All of it was such an incredible change, she would never get enough of the smell of the morning dew or the haze as it rolled back under the soft warmth of the morning sun. It felt incredible to be free from the daily pressure of SHIELD. They chatted, rewatched old Doctor Who episodes, went exploring in the sometimes very wet mountain paths and had a picnic on the shore of Lake Lochmond. On one of the days, when Fitz was in the shower, she was speaking to his mother about Fitz’s childhood. His mother explained that he’d always wanted to be a Field Agent, not because he wanted to kill but because he wanted to _save._ She also said he fancied himself a bit of a James Bond – something Jemma made a mental note to tease him about at a later date. If she had been unsure about her decision to share a lab with Fitz before she came to Scotland, she wasn’t afterwards. Their time together revealed that they just seemed to connect on every level, which was probably a good thing as nothing else was connected in Fitz’s village. She swiftly found out that he hadn’t been joking about the awful internet, even checking her emails had been an utter nightmare.

 

They didn’t spend all of the time on vacation in Scotland, they both popped down to London for a few days to surprise visit Jemma’s somewhat wealthier family and, although he was too polite to say anything, it was very clear that Fitz viewed the rather large London house that Simmons lived in with awe. He eventually confessed that he became quite self-conscious of the comparatively small rural cottage in which he lived. Simmons’ parents weren’t round very much so they spent a lot of time sightseeing – they’d both done everything before but having spent so long away from Britain it felt nice to walk around somewhere familiar to both of them. They started at Greenwich University and then passed through a series of markets – they stopped for canoli there – then down and along the Southbank, passed the skate park and rows of living statues all the way up to the London Eye and then to the Houses of Parliament. They caught a river taxi back up the Thames, something neither of them had done before, and as the day drew to a close they chatted until the early hours of the morning. They lit the fireplace in her father’s library and toasted marshmallows indoors – something Simmons knew her father would vehemently oppose but it was a notion which Fitz seemed to find so amusing that they couldn’t _not_ do it. Whether a stroke of genius or insanity, they enjoyed them nonetheless.

 

But alas, all too soon, their vacation was at an end and they had to fly back to America. After two weeks in Great Britain they were a little relieved when the familiar warmth of the US enveloped them as they stepped onto the tarmac, embracing them like they were long lost friends. That relief turned to frustration in short order as they desperately tried to unzip their jackets and regretted the choice to wear long sleeve shirts – it had been _so_ cold when they left from Scotland in the early hours of the morning, wearing jumpers had seemed like a good idea at the time. They didn’t say a great deal to each other as they collected their luggage and checked through border control, they were both exhausted from the long flight and thoroughly jetlagged, and by the time they got on the bus to take them to the train station to get back the SHIELD Academy, Jemma had fallen asleep on Fitz’s shoulder. He idly put a hand on her shoulder to steady her as the bus trundled along, twisting this way and that, turning and snaking its way to their destination.

 

The train journey was slightly more lively; Simmons perked up when they had to get off the bus – which was a good thing as Fitz couldn’t carry her and their luggage. They spent the vast majority of their time on board planning what they would do when they got back to the new lab. They also tucked into some of Fitz’s mum’s legendary homemade shortbread biscuits, which they had with a drink that the train company insisted was tea. The two of them dreaded to think how many stereotypes they were conforming to as they begrudgingly finished the subpar warm and depressingly tasteless liquid from the Styrofoam cups the tea was served in. Neither of them said anything but they both knew what the other was thinking; tea ought to be made in a pot and served in a mug. Simmons’ father had always told her that “Making tea in a mug is a tell-tale mark of an uncouth nature.” He almost certainly would have stormed off to the instructor’s cabin, knocked loudly on the door and let loose a barrage of insults and profanities at what he would undoubtedly have referred to as “Pig swill.”

 

The thought made her smile, it had been nice to see her family, warts and all, and to share them with Fitz the way he had shared his home with her made them feel closer and more in sync than they had ever before. As she watched Fitz excitedly talk about some of the new features their lab would have she felt completely and utterly at ease, thrilled at the future the two of them would have together, as _partners_.

 

 

_60 hours after the BUS explosion_

_Fitz._ It was the first word she thought, her hands instinctively touched her stomach. Her wet hair clung to her face as she blearily opened her eyes, coughing on the thick, black smoke that had filled the room. Everything sounded far away, as though underwater, but she could just about make out the sounds of muffled gunfire against the high-pitched tones of the hospital fire alarm. _Fitz._ She panickedly thought again as she took in her surroundings, the hospital was under attack and she was unarmed, alone and had left her phone in her handbag in the ward where Fitz was anaesthetised. Her heart pounded hard against her chest - she’d only left to take a shower. Mack had forced her to, said he’d look after Fitz and that she should get some rest. Three days without sleep meant she finally conceded defeat and was given one of the rooms the student nurses stay in during the week. She felt physically sick, both from the smoke inhalation and from the fact that Fitz was also somewhere in the hospital, utterly helpless to defend himself.

 

Despite her fatigue from barely sleeping for the last three days and the lack of oxygen she found herself clawing at the floor, gasping for whatever air she could find and retching as she tried to remember the way towards the door. Pulling herself shakily to her feet, cutting one of her palms on broken glass as she did so, Simmons spluttered her way into the corridor and was immediately hit by a wall of warmth – one half of the corridor was entirely in flames, the bright orange lights dancing dangerously nearby. Heading the other way she made for where the smoke was thinnest, turning the corner and finding a window with the glass blown throw letting in enough air for her to catch her breath in and plan her next move. Breathing was becoming harder with each passing moment, even after she got to the ledge of the window and at the back of her mind she wondered if this was what Fitz experienced when he was drowning – the terror of drawing breathless breaths. She had to push that to one side, the thought made her gut twist and coil in knots. Simmons had to get to Fitz, she knew that, but she couldn’t help him if she suffocated on the way there by charging ahead recklessly. It was only as she leant against the edge of the window ledge that she noticed the shards of glass stuck in her hand.

 

She didn’t have time to patch herself up, she had to move and find Fitz. With each passing moment the smoke was getting denser and the gunfire that had originally felt so distant now sounded alarmingly nearby. Her eyes watered as she desperately searched for someone or something that could help her, eventually spotting a CO2 fire extinguisher bolted to the wall. Wrenching it free she snapped the nozzle forward and went to double back towards Fitz’s ward – the extinguisher could give her the time she needed to get to him. Fitz’s ward was beyond the swiftly approaching swirling darkness at the other end of the corridor, further into the building. Her heart tremored as she saw the orange glows of what she assumed must be raging flames in the direction she had to head, but her thoughts on how best to get through were cut short when a series of flashlights lit up the smoke. Any hope that these were firefighters, though, was immediately scuppered when the men opened fire, their muzzleflashes shining through the thick gloom. She barely had time to react before she felt a burning hot pain running through her left arm and hit the ground. The bullet passed straight through her, getting itself lodged in the wall behind.

 

She had expected to feel panic, to be powerless in fear and terror like a rabbit caught in headlights, but she didn’t. Instead, she instinctively pulled herself around the corner and held the fire extinguisher close to her chest. She held her breath, refusing to let herself cough and give away where she was. She could scarcely hear anything over the sound of her heart pounding in her damaged ears but could tell by the growing strength of the flashlight beams from the corridor that at least one of her attackers was heading her way. Realising she couldn’t hold her breath for long she lie down against the laminated floor, getting herself as low as possible so as to be able to breathe the more oxygenated air. She pointed the nozzle of the fire extinguisher towards the light of her adversary, knowing she’d only get one chance at this. She was pinning her hopes that the soldier would expect her to run and would round the corner aiming high. It would give her a chance at least and, after what felt like an absolute eternity, the soldier’s boot stepped out from around the corner and straight in front of her.

 

She immediately squeezed the trigger of the fire extinguisher tightly and closed her eyes as the nozzle jetted out ice cold compressed carbon dioxide over the soldier’s feet. The man jumped back in a mixture of surprise and pain, dropping against the opposite wall and, as he slid down to the floor, opening himself up to a blast from the fire extinguisher to his torso and then face. She knew she only had seconds and sprung forward towards the downed HYDRA agent, the presence of HYDRA confirmed by the emblems stitched onto his helmet and jacket sleeve. The agent reeled around in pain from the icy blast and as she unclipped his sidearm from his shoulder holster the residual cool air from spraying the fire extinguisher was a welcome relief against her flushed cheeks in the steadily increasing heat of the fire. Fingers firmly clasped around the metal she closed her eyes and squeezed the trigger, firing one shot square into the man’s chest. She knew she didn’t _have_ to kill him, but on some level it felt like avenging what they did to Fitz and to Skye. Besides, if she didn’t she would have had to have left him unconscious in the burning building; it was a death sentence either way. She pulled off his gas mask and somewhat awkwardly attached it around her own face – it was trickier than she expected with the use of only one hand and, as she finally slotted it on, she felt a slight pang for Fitz. When she heard the tell-tale hiss of the oxygen circulating within the mask she joyfully breathed the fresh air it provided her, before rising to her feet, and heading into the smoke. She kept her gun forward, just in case the other members of the HYDRA team were nearby.

 

With each step down the corridor that just an hour earlier had been so clear her heart pounded furiously against her ribcage, her entire body shook with the exertion of moving through the heat though her one usable hand somehow kept the gun steady. The building creaked around her under strain from the fire as the great steel frame within the walls began to bend and then slowly buckle. The walls seemed to tilt as the weight of the floors above distorted the shape and strength of the structure. Nonetheless, step by step she traced her way back towards Fitz’s room, eventually rounding several corners and coming out to an area of the hospital less filled with smoke. Her feet padded softly against the ash covered corridor floor as she advanced on the open door she knew to be Fitz’s room. Sickness rose in her throat as she gradually closed the distance between her and the ward, unsure if she wanted to know what was inside. A lifetime passed in the time it took her to reach the empty door frame and peer inside.

 

“Fitz!” She screamed, not caring who heard her as she saw the empty bed, dark stains of blood glinting on the covers. She hurried to the ensuite, hoping to find him there but neither him nor Mack were anywhere to be found. “Fitz!” She screamed again, voice scratching at the back of her throat. Her knees gave way and she found herself kneeling on the floor, her good arm gripping the bloodied bedsheets in despair. She looked in disgust as the blood on her hands from her arm wound mixed with the crimson on the sheets – the whole area had been locked down by soldiers, how had they got to him? After a few moments, she heard a deep voice from behind her – she instantly whirled round and pointed her gun at the doorframe.

 

“Simmons!” Mack’s powerful voice echoed from outside the corridor, sounding distorted and far away through her damaged ear drums.

 

“I’m here!” She called out, though her own voice didn’t sound like it belonged to her through the gas mask.

 

“Stay there – I’m coming!” He shouted, the words coming from somewhere within the denser section of smoke further up the corridor.

 

His great frame burst into the room, coughing with several large dark gashes revealing wounds across his face, arms, chest, and one of his legs. “FITZ?!” Simmons half yelled, half asked.

 

Mack stooped to check her, eyes drawn to the blood seeping from her arm. He shook his head. “I couldn’t stop them Jemma believe me I tried, they got him…”

 

She didn’t hear any of the other words he said, Fitz was gone. Fitz was _gone._

 

_SHIELD Academy of Science and Technology, 2013_

The argument had been taking place on and off for several weeks now.

 

“We could get the funding if we joined SHIELD.” Jemma told him, the air of exasperation in her voice readily apparent.

 

“We have joined SHIELD, in case you didn’t notice we joined SHIELD nine years ago.” Fitz shot back, his Scottish lilt kicking in, as it always did, when he was irritated.

 

“The _real_ SHIELD Fitz! We could save people’s lives, make a difference.” She retorted, rolling her eyes when he turned to walk away.

 

“And we don’t do that here?” Fitz snapped, walking across their lab to the DWARF prototype he had started working on and picking up a screwdriver to continue the project.

 

“We’re wasted in here Fitz! You haven’t even asked me what Fury’s representative wanted yet.” She said, her voiced raised in frustration.

 

“You took the meeting in private.” Fitz spoke in a low growl.

 

“You were invited too Fitz, you chose not to go – you could have come along if you weren’t being so bloody stubborn!” She hated the sound of her voice when she was angry, it always got higher.

 

“Yeah, well…” he started but stopped, clearly not wanting to continue talking. She was surprised he looked so hurt by the argument, normally he was as vocal as her but today his heart didn’t seem like it was in it.

 

“I thought you wanted to be a field agent.” Jemma said bluntly, changing tact. Fitz put down the screwdriver, and, when he said nothing, Jemma added, “Well don’t you?”

 

“I do.” He answered quietly, his gaze was firmly fixed on the DWARF he was building but his eyes were glassy and unfocussed. He refused to look at her.

 

“Then what’s wrong?” She said, softer this time. Something about his mannerism had changed, he looked desperate for something to interrupt the conversation – for someone to come in with a stack of paperwork and pull them apart, but this was their lab and barely anyone but themselves ever used it. “What’s wrong Leo?” She asked, tilting her head lower to try and make eye contact. He leaned on the desk for support.

 

He lifted his shining eyes to hers. They brimmed with care as he opened his mouth to say something but couldn’t, mouthing lost words to the air. His pupils scanned her face from left to right as though he was reading her; as though he could see through her and past her and inside her all at once. Nine years was a long time to hope that they would be more than just friends, it was too long, but every once and again she felt the hope and fear and love and cold sense of rejection surge towards the surface. She wanted to close the distance between them, press her lips against him and run her hands through his unruly brown hair. She wanted him to be hers, because she was his. She almost stepped forward but the moment was lost, Fitz broke into a strained smile, and joked, “Jemma I have only been in one fight my entire life and you remember how that turned out.” His eyes didn’t lose any of their intensity, and she could see his hand trembling against the worktop.

 

“We can’t hide away in this lab forever Leo, I want to see the world…” _with you_ she added in her mind.

 

He snapped back into life, seemingly offended, “Hide away? Hide away! We’re not hiding from anything, that’s not what this is about. You want to go gallivanting with a band of gruff bearded men with itchy trigger fingers and IQ in the double digits then be my guest!” He waved his hand towards the door in an overly dramatic gesture, “And this is a very nice lab thank you – we may not get another like this one.”

 

“It is a very nice lab Fitz, and you’re right – if we left I don’t know what we’d get, but I don’t want to work with gruff bearded men with itchy trigger fingers, I want to work with you.” she stepped forward to him, “and if you _really_ want to stay then I’ll stay. We’re _partners_ Leo, always and in everything.” She said the word _partners_ as though it were poison to her.

 

The truth was she had always hoped they’d become something more, gradually convincing herself that as the years passed on and both of them went through relationships with other people that he simply wasn’t interested, that she should move on. Oft times she even managed to convince herself that she didn’t see him that way, weeks and months would go by content she didn’t feel anything for him beyond friendship and then he’d say something or look at her a certain way and it would all rush flooding back.

 

“It could be an incredible opportunity Fitz, an elite airborne unit, Level 5 Clearance, supervised by Agent Coulson himself.” She said, in an attempt to win him over with the intrigue. Strictly speaking she had promised Director Fury’s representative she wouldn’t disclose Coulson’s survival to anybody, but since Fitz was supposed to be in the meeting with her she felt like it was alright.

 

“Agent Coulson is dead.” Fitz said, a look of confusion across his face as to how Jemma could have forgotten, she had squeezed his hand on the day of remembrance for those who had been killed by Loki’s assault. They themselves had very nearly been posted on the Helicarrier. “He died in New York.”

 

“He didn’t Fitz, they covered it up. That’s what the meeting was about – if you’d have turned up you would have–” She began but he cut across her.

 

“You know damn well why I couldn’t show up to it.” Fitz protested, indignantly, that definitive Scottish lilt in his tone.

 

“Professor Vaughn would have rescheduled if you’d have only asked him to, you didn’t want to go.” She said utterly frustrated at how stubborn Fitz was being – he wasn’t normally like this, something was different.

 

“Of course I would’ve gone.” He half-heartedly retorted, waiting for her to argue back.

 

“No, you wouldn’t have.”

 

“I would! I just needed more time.” He shot back, catching his second wind.

 

“More time to do what?” Simmons made a wide gesture with her arms.

 

“To think!” He looked around him wildly before continuing with a surprising amount of spite, “One of us has to!”

 

“Don’t be so childish Fitz.” She retorted, wondering why he was acting so tetchily.

 

“Why are you so damned desperate to leave?” Fitz asked almost angrily, rounding on her, eyes fired defiantly.

 

“I’m not! What are you afraid of? Why are you so desperate to stay?” She snapped back, he could be so infuriating.

 

“I’m not!” Fitz half shouted back at her.

 

“Then why can’t we even talk about this without arguing?” Jemma asked exasperated.

 

“What is there to talk about? You’ve already made up your mind.” His words burned.

 

“Made up my mind? Leo!” She felt her own anger rising, “We’re talking about this now precisely because I haven’t made up my mind.” He laughed derisively at her, disbelievingly.

 

“You don’t want to stay here.” He told her coldly, but his voice betrayed the hope that she would disagree with him.

 

“Not forever Fitz… Do you?” She asked him, sincerely.

 

A silence filled the room. She had lied; she _had_ made up her mind and after a few painstaking moments she turned to leave, finally conceding what she already knew was the case – she wouldn’t leave without him. She headed towards the door, running a hand through her hair and sighing – she hated fighting with Fitz, even though she knew it was only normal when one spends as much time together as they do and that he’d come around sooner or later but it still felt awful. It was only when she reached the door that she heard him speak, his voice softer and more quiet this time.

 

“I’m not scared,” he burst out as she walked away, “if that’s what you’re thinking.”

 

“No.” She answered equally softly, even though she didn’t believe him. “I know you’re not Leo.” She tried to be reassuring anyway but he cut across her.

 

“I mean, I am scared…” He repeated, before adding “but not for me, Jemma.” That same intensity behind his eyes returned, they brimmed with concern and unspoken words.

 

“Leo.” She said, unsure of what else to say.

 

“I can’t lose you Jemma, and out there in the field – I can’t protect you either, we’re safer and better off in here.”

 

And then she understood. He only wanted to stay because he didn’t want her to get hurt. It was always his dream to be a Field Agent, she suddenly found herself wondering if all these years he’d given up on it, to be with her, to _protect_ her. It occurred to her for the first time that he presumably had also received assignment options to go into the field, with a skillset like his how could he not? She couldn’t know if he’d turned down things to hold up their partnership – he hadn’t said anything, but then, he wouldn’t.

 

“You don’t have to protect me Fitz, we can protect each other.” She said.

 

“Can we?” He asked her, evidently disbelievingly. “I mean, really? We’re scientists Jem, not soldiers. We don’t belong out there.”

 

“We wouldn’t be alone, we’d have your team of bearded men with itchy trigger fingers,” she said, relieved when Fitz broke into a slight smile. “And besides, we’ll have each other the whole time.”

 

After a long pause he tilted his head slightly and asked lowly, “where would we go?”

 

“Does it matter?” She shot back at him sincerely.

 

“No.” He answered honestly. Jemma and him had done weapons training before, she’d seen his scores and he hadn’t even been too bad it – though not nearly as good as he thought he should be. He really did want to be an agent, but how could he do his job if he had to continually think about her?

 

“We don’t have to rush into anything Fitz, not until you’re ready.” She closed the gap between them and put her hand on his shoulder.

 

“What was the offer?”

_The Playground, 72 hours after the BUS explosion_

Jemma’s arm throbbed and lungs burned in her chest as she sat in the medical bay with the now conscious Skye. Mack was in the next room in an induced coma, breathing through a ventilator. He had taken in a lot more smoke than Simmons had, unable to find himself a gas mask. Coulson, May, Trip, Hunter and Morse were all holding a meeting in Coulson’s office – if it wasn’t for the gradually increasing sense of drowsiness induced by the painkillers Coulson had insisted she take, she would have been in the meeting with them. She had half a mind to just stand up and join them anyway, but someone had to watch over Skye and Mack – and she didn’t trust the strength in her legs.

 

“I’m sorry Jemma.” Skye said; her voice weak and lacking her usual fire.

 

“Don’t be.” Simmons said; only half paying attention. She couldn’t stop thinking about how much blood was on the sheets of the hospital bed – the doctors had told them under no circumstances was Fitz to be moved… She shuddered.

 

“They won’t kill him.” Skye croaked, attempting to reassure her.

 

“He killed thirty four of them.” Simmons said coldly. The meaning was not lost on Skye. _Simply killing him would be a mercy._

 

“He’s got valuable information.” Skye offered, shifting uncomfortably in the hospital bed, trying to give Simmons some hope.

 

“And how do you think they’re going to get him to talk?” Simmons said, gritting her teeth. Skye was silent for a moment; they both knew what awaited Fitz if he’d even survived the abduction. _Too much blood._

 

“I… He saved my life, back there…” Skye said; her hand ghosting over the burns from where he’d seared her wound shut. “If he hadn’t burnt it shut–” She started, but Jemma cut across her.

 

“I know.” She said sharper than she meant to. Her eyes were unfocussed and hot tears dripped down her cheeks.

 

“I’m so sorry Jemma, I tried to protect him – I did – but I couldn’t…” Skye told her, regret and pain and fear in her voice.

 

“It wasn’t your fault Skye,” Simmons interrupted, _it was mine._

 

This was Simmon’s fault; somehow she just knew it. She knew that Jemma Simmons was responsible for the kidnapping and probable death of the only person she had ever truly cared about, of her Leo Fitz. After all, she had encouraged him to join SHIELD, she had put him in this situation – he’d even warned her against it. If they hadn’t left the lab then she wouldn’t have got infected, jumped off the plane, caused his hypoxia and the entire chain of events that led to him building his suit, being kidnapped and now lying somewhere either dead or soon to be tortured to that point. The memory of his lips on hers, his hands around her, him inside of her, only added more guilt and grief.

 

“It’s not yours either,” Skye grumbled, she hospital bed, she was paler than Simmons had ever seen her.

 

“Isn’t it?” Simmons asked pleadingly, “I asked him to join the team, if I hadn’t–”

 

“HYDRA moved against the Academy, he’d have been no safer there.” Skye told her flatly, a flicker of her usual flame rekindled in her eyes, “Besides, Fitz wanted to be an agent. It wasn’t your fault.”

 

“How was he… in the end?” Jemma asked, fear through her voice. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know the answer. Skye grimaced in discomfort as she remembered.

 

“He thought you’d gone down in the BUS, wanted to go and look for you but wouldn’t leave me behind – even when I told him to.” Skye began and Simmons cracked a slight smile – that did sound like Fitz. “I couldn’t move and his brace was busted so he took some of that serum of his, he was preparing for the HYDRA soldiers as he burnt my wound closed but I don’t remember anything after that… except waking up here of course.”

 

Simmons didn’t say anything for a while, just nodding and accepting the information – trying not to imagine how scared he must have been in his final moments. When Skye realised Simmons wasn’t going to talk she continued, “He was brave… and _loyal.”_ Skye said with a hint of disappointment, remembering that the young scientist had not kissed her back.

 

Simmons found herself thinking of Fitz’s house in Scotland, she had never revisited it with him. _Why did we never go back, we always said we would go back… why didn’t we go back?_ She thought to herself and before she knew what was happening she had walked towards the door. Her feet led and she followed, not stopping to speak to Koenig as she passed him in the corridor. She unthinkingly made her way down the many corridors of the Playground, not daring to look inside the lab as she walked by it to avoid seeing how empty it would feel without Fitz. When she finally reached where she was going she pushed open the door of Coulson’s office and looked at the assembled team of men and women there, wishing Fitz was there too and that they were just prepping for a normal mission.

 

“Where is he?” She asked more aggressively than she intended, the desperation adding power to her voice.

 

Coulson looked up at her with eyes deep with sorrow, he shook his head slightly with a sigh and nervously admitted, “We… We don’t know yet.”

 

Tears burned her cheeks as she left the room, her hand instinctively resting on her stomach. _Leo… Where are you?_

 

_Location Unknown, 72 hours after the BUS explosion_

Leo awoke from the darkness in a panic, hands instinctively reaching into the air scrabbling towards Jemma. There was nothing there. He was lying on the ground in a dimly lit room. The cold air bit against him as his eyes weakly adjusted to their surroundings, struggling to focus. Judging by the emptiness he judged that a cell wasn’t the primary function of the room, it had been repurposed for his incarceration – though what it was before he wasn’t sure. _Nothing good,_ he found himself thinking. The only source of light came from one miserably weak bulkhead in the corner of the room that could barely pierce a few feet into the darkness, though Fitz was grateful as it hid the true horror of his prison. He groaned and rolled onto his back, pain searing through his body. The floor beneath him was damp and as he looked up he noted that the rusted metal beams were bowed slightly – they were either underground or under something very heavy like a skyscraper, the design of the rivets suggested the structure was post-WWII – though not by much.

 

He attempted to stand but couldn’t even pull himself into a sitting position before his body protested with a series of violent spasms. Agony rushed through him as he moved the swollen and bruised muscles, Fitz half yelled in pain before conceding that he would need more time before he could stand. Instead he turned his head once more to his surroundings, taking in where he was. There was a door on one side with a closed porthole. Three of the walls were indistinct; merely a series of pieces of plate metal riveted together but across one was a large grimy two way mirror. A shudder ran through him as he considered the idea he was being watched and he looked away, somehow it made him feel better to. Or, at least, it would have done had he not noticed that here and there on the concrete below him were disturbing reddish brown stains and smears. His heart beat fast against his chest.

 

He closed his eyes tight, wishing it were a dream. Hoping that Jemma would return from him to hold his hand and tell him it would be fine, wishing that he’d hear her voice. But the voice that cracked over the old radio system was not hers… it was not hers at all.

 

“Good evening Leo Fitz, I trust you slept well,” the voice spoke with only the slightest hint of a German inflection, “Are you ready to comply?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So firstly sorry I haven't had a chance to reply to the lovely comments people have left - I have been insanely busy with work. Thank you for all the support you make this utterly worth doing. I hope you enjoyed the flashbacks, I realise now they make reasonable mini-one shots. Sorry for another cliff hanger, and no smut (yet), and not really resolving much... but I hope you liked it nonetheless, I'd love to know what you think. Thanks again for all the supporters of the fic, I hope you've enjoyed the first month of the New Year (where's time going?!)


	8. Search

_The Playground 2014, before the crash_

 

Fitz’s lips pressed demandingly against Jemma’s before the BUS cargo ramp had even shut. She tried to get closer but the flight suits were in the way – he had to pull away from her completely to unstrap his suit and by the time he got to unclipping hers she practically growled at him for taking too long. Flying with her was the most exhilarating experience he’d ever had – to twist and turn in the air and defy gravity was incredible enough anyway but paired with the woman he loved more than anything else in the world – more than science itself – that feeling was indescribable. From Jemma’s frustrated growling he gathered she felt much the same way, he had to stifle a laugh at how quickly she wrapped herself around him once their flight packs were discarded.

 

Their kisses were hot and heavy; his heart was pounding in his ears as adrenaline surged through him. One look at her darkened eyes told him it was going to be now; he grabbed her hands and led her up the stairs towards the bunks almost two at a time. The door to his bed remained unopened for almost a minute as Jemma tried to open it without getting distracted. When Fitz smirked into her mouth at her shaking hands she nipped his lip in response, eyes glinting with mirth and promise. When it clicked open they didn’t bother to shut the door behind them before throwing themselves onto the bunk somewhat overenthusiastically – Fitz rolled over her on the narrow bed and hit his elbow hard on the wall.

 

Both laughing Jemma reluctantly pulled herself away to close the door and pull her top off while Fitz checked his arm to see if it was bleeding. By the time he looked up Jemma had unhooked her bra and made her way back onto the bunk with him; all thoughts of his elbow were swiftly forgotten. Indeed all thoughts of anything at all that weren’t Jemma Simmons were forgotten as he froze at the sight of her. If Leo Fitz had ever imagined perfection before this moment he would revise his definition: on a high from flying and staring at the woman of his dreams he couldn’t imagine anywhere else he’d rather be than right there, with her in that moment. Somewhere a distant part of his mind quipped ‘perhaps a comfier bed’ but he paid it no heed.

 

Noticing his change in expression Jemma stopped trying to kiss him and leant back, suddenly nervous and feeling exposed. She cursed herself for pushing him too far too fast – every time they’d come anywhere close to where they were now he’d frozen up; he could barely sleep a full night next to her without leaving halfway through. She felt her chest constrict suddenly at the idea that she might not be attractive enough, she couldn’t hide the fear surging through her that he’d rather be with someone else than her – with someone funnier and more attractive like Skye or Bobbi.

 

She fought the instinct to cover herself up and tried to say with an even, unhurt voice, “Is everything ok, Fitz?”

 

All her fear melted away when he grinned, “Its perfect Jem.” He ran his hand across her chest and said almost reverently, “You’re so beautiful... I love you.”

 

And then they were kissing again. A tangle of clothes and sweaty limbs and all too soon it was over: Jemma could hear his heartbeat slowing through his chest as he traced his fingers gently across her back. By the time the plane touched down it jolted Fitz awake and the two of them rushed to get dressed. They desperately dodged May’s eyeline as they hurried like guilty teenagers back to the cargo bay and into the Playground. If they’d have been looking at the senior agent they might have missed as one eyebrow raised almost unnoticeably when she took in their flushed faces and tussled hair.

 

Leo Fitz was right. It was better in the comfier bed.

 

* * *

 

 

_Underground; date and location unknown_

 

Fitz stared at his reflection in the one-way mirror. His hair was greasy and longer than it had been in years, his jawline was covered in thick beard and although the myriad of cuts and bruises that had littered his face had faded somewhat he still looked a wreck. He couldn’t guess specifically how long he’d been kept in the bunker for – certainly more than a month if his beard was anything to go by – but beyond that he had no real idea. There were no clocks and the lights were never switched off; the food never changed (some kind of greyish meat) and seemed to come irregularly. He felt like he hadn’t slept since he arrived though he knew, logically, he must have done. In truth, his reflection was the only absolute proof of the passage of time, and staring at it gave him an anchor.

 

Staring at his reflection was also the only lasting way he had kept himself entertained. Every time he looked he hoped that he scared the living hell out of whoever was behind it. He would let his eyes drift beyond his mirror image as if he could see the men on the other side; the viewing area could be empty for all he knew but just in case it wasn’t he stared intently. He hoped that for a moment whoever was watching him would have to ask their colleague if Fitz could see them. It was almost the only game Fitz had – pick a slightly different spot in the glass and focus in on it; pick a different spot and wait for rescue. Of course, there was another game – a longer game, and one he wasn’t far from winning.

 

They wanted him to build them weapons; that was why they had abducted him from the hospital. HYDRA had no idea he had improvised in the jungle – they believed SHIELD was preparing for war on a far grander scale and that Fitz was the architect of a new type of artillery. The ruthlessness with which he had dispatched their attack team had sent them scared and desperate and for the last however long he had been their prisoner, HYDRA had him instructing their scientists how to make a fuel cell powerful enough to cause similar devastation. For Fitz it had been an easy decision to comply, the harder part was making it look like they’d broken him, that he’d do anything for them willingly. He didn’t know how many times they beat him, tortured him, projected images into his mind but he waited until he almost caved naturally and then surrendered. He surrendered while it was still his choice.

 

They wouldn’t trust him to build the fuel cell himself and it didn’t surprise him. The story of how Tony Stark had made a weaponised suit from scraps was well known and Fitz would not be given the chance to make such an escape. Instead he was asked questions which he would answer facing the glass; he was to provide detailed instructions and sometimes sketch out some of the more complicated bits. He was, by all appearances, living up to his end of the deal – the first casing for the fuel cell was a success and in complying he had received his first proper information about his prison. He had argued it was ‘essential’ to know the atmospheric conditions of the lab with precise accuracy and, if nothing else, could guess based on the air pressure the bunker was at least 40 meters underground. There was slightly too little oxygen in the air which he attributed to the fans being too old – he could hear the stressed generators from his cell.

 

The depth underground and the potential structural instability of the bunker had steered him from his original plan – to make the casing unstable and try to escape in the ensuing explosion. The pressure from any such blast would almost certainly kill anyone anywhere near the source and he had no idea how close his cell was. This deep underground there’d be no certainty that any activity would be visible from the air – just in case the team was watching he wanted to provide them with a way to find him just as they had in the forest. His design for the casing, then, had to give him the best chance of escaping and his friends the best chance of finding him – it would take the work of a genius to do both without his captors catching on. He fought to control a small smirk as, fortunately, one thing Leo Fitz had always been was a genius.

 

It was why, as best he could, he had to focus on the glass in front of him. When the casing triggered he would have just two minutes to prepare himself. Fitz had never made a plan surrounded by so many unknown variables before but this was what it was to be an agent – he owed it to Jemma and whoever was left of the team to get home. _Focus Fitz,_ he told himself _._ If he appeared distraught nobody would believe he was truly complying, staring blankly forward was how to survive in this place. Once his game, the _real_ game, was over no matter how he felt he would kill every HYDRA agent in this facility. He knew Jemma was alive but the plane explosion could’ve killed everyone else: he didn’t even know if Skye would survive her injuries. Fitz had never wanted to hurt anybody before but HYDRA had to be stopped, and he would do it.

 

The glass in front of him rippled. It only lasted a moment but it meant it was time.

 

Fitz began counting backwards from 120 as he walked to the corner of his cell and crouched low. He pulled the threading at the hems of his trousers and stripped off enough fabric to tie around his bare feet. At 90 seconds he lifted his shirt over his head and began blocking out as much light as he could around his eyes but crucially did not shut them. If they built the weapon as he designed it then the final blast would knock out the lights and break all the glass in the facility. He couldn’t afford to be disoriented and did his best to get adjusted before they went out. At 30 seconds he put his fingers in his ears ready.

 

 A loud high pitched ringing sounded and sure enough the lights sparked and the two way mirror shattered. He felt a wave of pressure knock him against the wall as the casing finally gave out.

 

“Fuck.” He cursed under his breath as he nursed his fractured ribs before setting his jaw, “Get up Fitz.”

 

He was prepared for the darkness; the faint outline of the observation platform was visible enough that he could quickly climb out of the cell and into a room that had once held computers monitoring him. The room itself was empty and the door beyond unlocked, in the corridor he could hear yelling and frantically searched around for anything he could use as a weapon.

 

“I’m coming Jemma.” He told himself as he found what was left of an old torch; the bulb inside broken from the noise. It wasn’t much but he reckoned it’d land harder than a punch.

 

* * *

 

 

_The Playground, after the crash_

“Simmons?” Mack called out as he strode into the lab to search for Jemma. He’d sprinted from the Director’s office and could feel his lungs aching under the strain – after more than three months he was still recovering from his smoke inhalation injuries. “Jemma where are you?”

 

One of the lab techs approached him sheepishly; his hulking size seemed to frighten them a little, “She’s erm… she’s not here.”

 

Mack didn’t wait to hear anything else and strode towards her room. She’d taken to spending more and more time in there – once she’d made sure Skye was stable she even began eating meals alone. Mack had only tried the lab first to save knocking on her room; they had never really got on as well as he and Fitz did and it felt less like intruding. Nonetheless he didn’t pause to catch his breath before pounding twice loudly on the door.

 

“Simmons.” He said more forcefully than he meant to.

 

There was an uncomfortable silence where he thought she wouldn’t reply but sure enough the door clicked open. All things considered she looked reasonably well – it was only the deep circles around bloodshot eyes that gave any indicator that something was amiss. He pretended not to notice that although it was almost 4pm she was still dressed in nightclothes.

 

“Is something wrong Mack?” She asked, her voice seemed rougher somehow - almost hollow as if from disuse.

 

“We’ve found him.” He said and watched as a thousand emotions seemed to ignite behind her eyes. She opened the door fully and crossed the room to get a hoodie he’d seen Fitz wearing before; that was when he noticed it. “Jemma…”

 

“Ready.” She said quietly, lifting her messy hair up and tying it into a loose ponytail. She froze suddenly when she saw where Mack was looking. “Oh…” she mumbled, before closing her eyes as if to curse herself.

 

“Does anybody know?” Mack asked, looking at the small but undeniably visible bump of Jemma’s belly.

 

“May does… and the medical team that checked us all out, so Coulson probably too. I think Skye’s guessed.” She admitted sheepishly, looking to her feet. “For a spy I’m not great at keeping secrets.” Mack didn’t know how to feel that he was pretty much the only one out of the loop, but then they’d never been close and she had no reason to tell him.

 

“And Fitz?” He asked carefully, she flinched slightly at the sound of the name.

 

“It’s his.” She said strongly, as if offended he’d think otherwise. She shifted almost apologetically when she realised that wasn’t what he’d meant. “I tried to tell him but he…” She slipped her arms through the hoodie sleeves and her demeanour changed entirely to the woman of action she had become, “Where is he Mack?”

 

By the time they both got to Coulson’s office everybody else was already assembled; the room went silent as they entered and Mack watched Jemma’s eyes flick immediately towards the intel being displayed on the wall. Satellite images were zoomed on what seemed to be a snowy mining town.

 

“Jemma,” Coulson said kindly before regaining his composure as director, “We’ve isolated a high-frequency pulse that emitted from somewhere in this mountain range.”

 

“Is it him?” Jemma asked; her voice stony. Mack guessed she wouldn’t let herself feel false hope.

 

“We can’t be sure,” Coulson said, “But whatever it was shattered the glass in every building a mile wide – sources on the ground are dismissing it as some sort of underground tunnel collapse but I don’t buy it.”

 

Skye chipped in from somewhere behind them, “It doesn’t add up – I’ve been digging around and can’t find anything real on the refinery – it’s like the company doesn’t exist.”

 

“What are you saying?” Jemma asked without taking her eyes off the screen for an instant.

 

“Either they’ve forgot to file papers for the last thirty years,” Skye started but May cut her off midsentence.

 

“Or they’re hiding something.” May stated bluntly.

 

“Either way,” Coulson said before putting an arm on Jemma’s shoulder, “Let’s go find out.”

 

She stood in silence for a moment taking it all in before stifling a quick sob and turning to Coulson. “Are these live?” She whispered and, when he nodded, stretched a shaking hand out against the screen. “How long ago was the pulse?”

 

“Seventy four minutes.” Coulson stated as Jemma rubbed her eyes to stop unshed tears from dropping. “Get kitted up, we’re wheels up in ten.”

 

Mack spoke for the first time since leading Jemma into the office, “Director Coulson?” He said tentatively before continuing, “They blew up the BUS… wheel’s up in what?”

 

Coulson smirked before answering cryptically, “Wheels isn’t really the right word.”

 

* * *

 

 

_Underground, date and location unknown_

Fitz sprinted through the maze of tunnels in whatever compound he was being held in. His breath was ragged and he was increasingly certain his pulse had done more than just knock out the glass across the base – the great whirring of the fans that sucked air into the facility had stopped. With each passing minute it was becoming harder and harder to breathe deeply and he couldn’t help but think back to the last time he’d nearly suffocated. In the darkness flashes of trying to rescue Jemma from the ocean swam into view. His eyes instinctively flicked down to his arm to search out the series of scars his brace had made but in the near total black he could barely make anything out. It was enough that he knew they were there and, hand shaking uncontrollably, he wished his brace was still working.

 

Approaching a set of stairs he paused near the bottom to listen – without a map he was working on the simple hypothesis that the higher he could get the more likely to come up above ground he was. Hearing no danger he sprinted up the steps, almost tripping twice before squinting in his new surroundings. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the second corridor since the stairs that he realised his mistake – even without the engines or the fans it was too quiet. Thinking about it Fitz hadn’t encountered anybody since escaping his cell and he knew he wasn’t that lucky – he wouldn’t be there if he was that lucky. Squeezing the pommel of the broken heavy duty torch in his hand he kept on heading forward hoping that he could find a way to turn the situation to his advantage.

 

A click sounded behind him followed by a small hissing. He didn’t have to turn around to know what was about to happen – dropping to the floor he curled into a ball and kept his eyes shut as a series of bright flashes and loud bangs rang out around him. Red flares bathed the tunnels in flickering crimson as HYDRA guards rushed towards him. There couldn’t have been more than four of them but they had the drop on him and he was weakened from injuries and malnutrition. His only hope was that since they needed the light to see him their eyes were just as unadjusted as his.

 

He scrambled to his feet and lunged forward towards the closest operative, tackling the guard to the ground before the others could react. He struck the man hard with the torch handle before reaching to where he hoped a pistol might be holstered but before he could find it he was thrown off by someone behind him. Fitz panicked as he saw the others closing in and threw the torch at the nearest one. It bought him precious seconds to find a new weapon and make an escape – crawling on the floor he grabbed at one of the lit flares on the ground and held it in front of him. One of the guards rushed him, gripping him and landing a punch on Fitz’ jaw but between the two of them the guard ended off worse – his arm had a series of burns from the flare. Fitz drew himself backwards using the sparks and smoke to hide himself in the dim light.

 

Even as he tracked backwards down the corridor he knew it was a temporary solution – the flare would burn out and he’d be unarmed when it did. They knew the layout, he didn’t. He suspected Jemma would’ve scolded him if she saw how he was handling the situation – one imminent crisis at a time. Assessing his situation he had to admit she would’ve been right to: his plan had only ever consisted of blowing up the base and then trying to escape but without the opportunity for even basic reconnaissance he’d had to improvise. Still, it was improvising that saved him again.

 

As the flare began to splutter out and the final burst of light faded Fitz almost burst out laughing – he’d led them so far away from their own flares that in the darkness he’d seemingly vanished in front of them when his went out. Not wasting a moment he sprinted in whatever direction he could get to in what was now the highest ever stakes hide and seek. He kept moving hands in front of him to feel out twists and turns, twice he caught himself on various pipes but even then it didn’t slow him. _Keep moving,_ he repeated again and again as he began to get dizzy and sick. He had no way of knowing if his vision was blurring but he guessed if it were daylight there’d be black spots in his eyes. By the time he was forced to slow his pace by his protesting body he couldn’t hear any footsteps following him – somewhere distant there was shouting and cursing but for a brief moment, he allowed himself a breath of increasingly thin air.

 

His legs gave out under him and he felt the strain on old injuries not quite healed. His lungs were burning and he wondered bitterly if he passed out whether his body would ever be found. Face pressed against the cold concrete floor he pulled himself underneath a couple of heavy duty pipes and hoped that it would be enough to hide him at least from the HYDRA guards should they come looking. His eyes were heavy – it was harder to tell if they were open or closed with each second. _You’re right,_ he said to himself as he pictured Jemma’s expression, _this was a terrible plan…_

_I love you Jem. I’m sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone, I'm finishing off my old stories and had fun getting back into this one - I hope you've enjoyed, it won't be two years until the next update I promise! Thanks to everybody who's reviewed, always great to get feedback. Happy New Year!


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